


Give me more

by wearemany



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/M, First Time, High School, M/M, Mormonism, Religious Themes & References, Songwriting, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-12
Updated: 2007-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They called this tough love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give me more

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Why should Ryan Ross be the only one stealing lines from Palahniuk?

 

  
 _ **You have to tell me about your future.**_  
"What's that song?"

Brendon's mom sets a glass of juice on the counter right at the edge of the Living section. Concert reviews are his own reward for getting through the real news. The OJ is just a conversational bribe.

He's still stuck in Local News, reading about a subdivision planned on the edge of Red Rocks and artifacts that could indicate the site was a native burial ground. "That's what these activists always try as a last resort," said the lead planner on the project.

Brendon wonders whether that's actually true or just an excuse given to the media. Maybe if he'd started reading the paper last year he'd be more sure. Project Brendon is a relatively recent development.

"The song you were humming just now," his mom says, leaning back against the sink. "And earlier, I heard you singing it in the shower."

What she really means is has he bought yet another album whose questionable themes and lyrics will feed her growing concern that Brendon Is Slipping; Steps Must Be Taken While Chance Of Eternal Salvation Remains Good.

Lately his mental Mom headlines are more dire than the paper's. She listens so carefully to his life that she should be able to hear him choking on every question.

Brendon Plans Insurrection, Secession, Abandonment Of Duties To Faith And Family. He thinks it loudly, carelessly, but she doesn't blink. If she can read his mind, he's already screwed.

"It's just this new thing I learned," he says, not lying, _not lying yet_. He shoves the last piece of toast in his mouth. "For band," he says around the food, and if there's a word missing from his answer that's not a lie either, exactly, he's just trying not to talk and chew at the same time.

*

So he's in a band now.

He says it again and again in his head. Yeah, he's a guy in a band. He's the kind of guy who's in a band.

Project Brendon is all about figuring out what kind of guy he is, and so far he's a guy who is skeptical that anybody on the news tells the whole truth, and a guy who is never going to eat meat again no matter how much the smell of bacon is the most unholy temptation in all the world. He's a guy who never should have tried Red Bull because he likes it way too much not to drink it every day the rest of his life, and a guy who caught a ride with Brent after school to go talk about his favorite records and screw around with a borrowed guitar.

He's a guy who got hit smack in the chest with how much he wanted two total strangers to like him and ask him to come back.

The drummer, Spencer, had licked his lips like he had something to say but wasn't sure it was worth the effort. Ryan, the singer, nodded and pushed his hair out of his face and said, "We have practice Thursday."

"Cool," Brendon said as Ryan stared steadily. Ryan was a little intimidating. He probably started Project Ryan when he was five. Brendon shrugged like it was no big deal, like people asked him to be in bands all the time, and said, "Thursday's cool with me."

*

He tells his mom he and a guy from guitar class are trying to write some music, maybe something for the school concert, not for sure but maybe if they can spend a lot of time getting it perfect. He'll probably get home kind of late a couple nights a week.

"Remember that song you wrote for your sister," she starts, but, God, he was, like, twelve, and it was just a couple of rhyming words and a -- okay, the melody was pretty good, but he was just a kid and he wishes she'd quit reminding him like it wasn't all that long ago. She stops, though, so maybe she remembers how last time she brought it up he threw a not-very-mature tantrum and said all those things out loud. He bites the inside of his cheek like he does every morning and every Sunday and every Family Home Evening.

He's in a band. He's in a band. If he's grounded he'll have to sneak out for practice and inevitably get caught by his mom or someone from the ward will notice and call his dad and he wants this, this band, _his_ band, more than he cares about what his mom thinks in this moment.

"It's no big deal," he says, and she smiles and touches his nose before going upstairs.

He knows why he's lying, but he's not sure why he feels so shitty about it. He's not very invested these days in impressing the prophet or Heavenly Father or anybody at church. He quit praying last year, even before Project Brendon, because it's not fair to ask for something from someone he's pretty sure doesn't exist, especially when he doesn't want to feel obligated in any way to owe something in return.

Lying, though, feels like one of those things that shouldn't be about God. It's just wrong, and he keeps doing it anyway, keeps acting like a scared little boy. He doesn't want to be a guy who lies just because it's harder to say, _hey, I'm ready for my life to start now, please prepare to be disappointed in how I've turned out_.

*

One day during practice Brendon is playing around with the harmony, pushing it higher and lower and yeah, he's showing off a little what he can do but only because he really wants to contribute something more than rhythm guitar, something that will make these guys need him like he needs this.

Ryan twists sideways, still strumming, mouth open a little but not singing anymore. His chin tilts up a notch, like a nod, like _keep going keep going_ and so Brendon drops down a third and takes over the melody, stretching it until his voice actually breaks.

Ryan's hand skids along the frets, screaming to a halt. Brent plucks his bass at half-strength and Spencer just stops, arm still flung up in the air, and says, "Shit."

Brendon coughs and swallows and Jesus, his voice hasn't broken like that in years, and of course it has to be now when --

"Yeah," Ryan says, laughing under his breath, but he's nodding. "Shit, no shit, why am I still pretending I should be the singer here?"

*

So now he's the lead singer in a band. He's his band's lead singer. He has a band.

He's the frontman.

He tries not to think too much about that part. It's still Ryan's band, Ryan and Spencer's really, Ryan's lyrics and Spencer's pulse and the two of them will be in bands together the rest of their lives no matter who else comes and goes. He and Brent talk about it once in the car, about being replaceable, but even Brent's known them since they first started playing.

Brendon still doesn't want to give them a good excuse to look for someone else, so for the first month of practice he tries hard not to be a total freak, to sound smart and like he knows what the hell he's talking about when it comes to anything but music, which he obviously does know more about than all the rest of them put together.

But Ryan keeps talking about books Brendon's never even heard of, writers and artists so far off the approved list of good little Mobot texts that Brendon can't begin to act like he knows what Ryan's talking about. Ryan and his tiny t-shirts from shows he went to when he was in, like, eighth grade, bands whose bass players remembered his name at the merch booth, bands on tours like Ryan says they could be playing, _should_ be playing in a year if things go the way he's planned.

Brendon sits through every family dinner full of barely checked fury, full of envy and wrath and rage at his parents and their carefully constructed cell of righteousness designed to protect his eternal soul even if it leaves him fumbling blind. There's a whole fucking _world_ out there full of words and music and people living their lives how _they've_ decided is righteous and good, not just because some man who supposedly hears the word of God said so.

"So it's all about this, like, transsexual, you know, and she's --"

They're on the lawn outside Spencer's grandmother's house, waiting because she's making Spencer try on a suit for a wedding, and Ryan looks up from the grass he's tearing into long narrow strips.

"You should just read it," Ryan says. "I think you -- of anyone you would like it. Really it's about what happens when people hate themselves. When you let the world make you believe you should hate yourself."

Brendon sits up. "I don't hate myself."

Ryan ties two splinters of grass in a knot, his long fingers looping around and his lips pulled tight.

"I don't," Brendon says, and cringes at the whine in his voice. "No, really, I don't know what kind of guy you think --"

"I think," Ryan says, and puts his hand on the ground an inch from Brendon's leg. Brendon can feel his own kneecap tingling against his jeans, like he's some kind of bionic monster. "I think you want something new to believe in."

Ryan pushes up, brushing dirt off his pants like he hasn't just summed up the last year of Brendon's life in a heartbeat.

"C'mon," Ryan says, and holds out a hand. "Let's go save Spence."

*

Spencer and Ryan take him shopping, with two hundred bucks of Brendon's carefully hoarded savings and a single-minded mission: "Buy Brendon better clothes." Spencer doesn't even apologize for how that sounds a little mean. It's worse because he's right. Brendon's mom says anything that didn't come down through his brothers is a luxury a family of five kids with one income can't afford. God forbid he doesn't actually want to dress just like them, if he has his own idea of what first impression he'd like to make.

"I'm sure you have a sense of style," Spencer says. "Somewhere."

Somewhere turns out to be Nordstrom's, even though Forever 21 has a rack of jeans in the doorway that Ryan flips his fingers through like he's shuffling a deck of winning cards.

Spencer touches Ryan's arm, shaking his head. "He's going to have to try them on. And we're probably going to have to _help_."

"I _am_ capable of dressing myself," Brendon points out. "And also I'm standing right here. I'm practically in the same conversation you're having about me."

Ryan spares a predictably derisive glance for Brendon's outfit. "If that's what you call dressing yourself." Then he says, "Fine. Department store."

They pick out eleven pairs of jeans from the junior's section for Brendon to try on before Spencer leads them to the "more socially appropriate dressing rooms." A man in a shirt and tie frowns at their selection and starts to protest when Ryan follows Brendon into the cubicle. Brendon hears Spencer say, in this fake-pity voice, "We promised his mom we'd help, but he's so --" Huge sigh. " _Special_." Apparently shopping is Ryan and Spencer's idea of fun, which sort of makes sense given that they don't drink, like not at all. Brendon knows plenty of kids who spend Saturdays getting wasted and Sundays in church. This band is clearly a different kind of trouble.

Ryan shuts the door and perches on the edge of the bench. Brendon does okay until he tries to get the first pair fastened, and after a minute or two he bites his lip and throws up his hands. "Ross, for God's sake, how do you --" Ryan's hand darts out, yanking and tucking the tiny metal button inside its hole. If only he had a corset and a powdered wig and a small army of ladies-in-waiting Brendon would feel like a proper princess. It's the kind of off-kilter crazy idea he gets a lot around Ryan lately and he tries to suppress his giggle.

"Hmm," Ryan says, and leans against the wall. "Those fit okay. I guess. Let's show Spence."

He pushes Brendon out through the corridor of dressing rooms, past a half-open door where a man is folding the tail of a tuxedo shirt into shiny black pants. Brendon is presented to Spencer like a prize show dog and Spencer circles around him and goes, "Hmm," just like Ryan, and then shakes his head non-committally. "Try the other ones."

So he does it again, and again, Ryan trooping back with him every time until Brendon jokes, "What, are you scared to be left alone with creepy attendant guy?"

"No," Ryan snaps, but the next time out to Inspector Spencer, Brendon notices how carefully the guy watches Ryan, like he doesn't trust him, like somehow in his own skinny girl jeans Ryan's going to steal something or maybe already has. The guy keeps staring at Ryan's tiny back pockets, as if anything else could fit in there, could be smuggled out in the millimeter of space between his skin and pants.

"Creepy fuck," Brendon whispers to Ryan as they cycle back for the last round of tryouts.

"Sometimes," Ryan says, a low, suddenly serious warning, "they're worse."

Brendon's not really sure what that means. They're crammed together in this weird hushed confessional and he almost thinks he could get Ryan to explain for a change, but then they're confronted with a hard choice of washes and button flies and Brendon gives up and puts Spencer in charge of final selection and they end up spending every penny Brendon has on him.

"That's okay," Brendon jokes as they walk out to the car with just one little bag holding all his hard-earned jeans. "It's not like there's any room in them for money anyway."

*

They never have a conversation about it, but it's like Ryan discovers the top secret blueprints for Project Brendon and makes it his business to accelerate the takeover. He supplies a steady stream of books and blogs and zines written in Sharpie on duct tape and sold only in dingy skate stores. He says one day at practice, deadly dry and terrifying, "I'm just not sure I can be in a band with a guy who hasn't seen the special edition of Moulin Rouge."

Brent kicks the top of his case closed. "Again?"

Spencer rolls his eyes in Ryan's direction and says, "Yeah, how about tomorrow?"

Tomorrow's Saturday. Brendon's big plan consists of beginning to fake a cough in preparation for ditching church on Sunday.

"You can be excused," Ryan says, but only to Brent, which is okay because Brendon doesn't want to be excused, he almost pathetically wants to be included in this, in everything Ryan plans, in everywhere they're all going to go.

"What time?" Brendon asks.

*

Brendon watches Satine fly across a theatre and the world and is pretty sure that if required at this moment he too could dance to the moon and back. He tries to pay attention to everything on screen at once and then realizes he's just going to have to watch this again and again and again. Fuck family-friendly Disney musicals he's sat through with his nieces and nephews a million times. Those songs are good but they're not _real_ , they're just cotton candy, fake and sugary watercolor paintings of a world with an impossibly perfect price of admission. This is real shit, real screaming and fighting and fucking and dying.

"No more Red Bull for Brendon," Spencer says after Brendon jumps a half-foot in the air at the first punch thrown in Fight Club. Ryan's walking in from the bathroom, still buttoning his pants, and he sits back down on the couch with Brendon. "Maybe your people avoid caffeine for a reason. Maybe you're genetically incapable of processing it."

"If you, Spencer James Smith the fifth, the man with the most Mormon name in all of Las Vegas, are referring to my devoted brothers and sisters in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints --" Brendon starts, and stops when Ryan laughs. He made Ryan laugh, Ryan and his utterly calm, cool stare like the world is only barely managing to keep him from dying of boredom. Brendon totally forgets what else he was going to say.

Spencer stretches out on his side on the carpet and yawns and says, "This is the part where Ryan tells you how the book is so much better."

Ryan totally does just that, but Brendon doesn't mind. He's got so many books he wants to read now that unless Ryan is waving his own crumpled copy with notes scrawled in the margins and talking about how it changed his fucking life, man, _seriously, Brendon, you have to_ , it still goes on the end of the list. Occasionally the book-vs.-movie commentary is interrupted by Spencer talking about the Dust Brothers or a half-hearted debate about Helena Bonham Carter's hotness or Ryan changing his mind again which of Brad Pitt's fur coats he wants most.

When it ends, Brendon goes into Ryan's kitchen and calls his mom and tells her Brent's parents are dropping them at a movie. His Sunday cold is just going to have to be a sudden onset thing. He comes back and Ryan is leaning forward to talk quietly with Spencer. Spencer rolls his neck back on the couch and says, "I don't know, if you think so, it's your --"

Ryan turns to look at Brendon, blinks once slowly and sort of drags his eyes from Brendon's face down along the new pair of jeans Brendon finally had the balls to wear clear from his own room past his mother and her squinting eyes.

"You like Bowie, right?" Ryan asks, and Brendon says yes, he always says yes to Ryan's questions like that, especially when it's actually true. Ryan shrugs at Spencer, like _why not_ , and Spencer gets up and puts in another DVD.

"Velvet Goldmine is a freaky mind-fuck of a movie," Ryan says, low, leaning in to talk in Brendon's ear. "Just look at those pants, Jesus," he says later, and then, dismissively, "Arthur's such a _fan_." Once, a little louder: "I think you're right, Spence. This movie can't actually get any gayer."

This is a test, Brendon realizes with a sharp snap when Ryan's wristbone bumps his again. This is only a test. If this were an actual meaningful _moment_ in his actual life it would be louder, it would be more obvious. This is only a test.

This is his test, Ryan and Spencer's test for him, for the Mormon, for the new guy.

It's just a movie, a movie about these guys obsessed with each other in different ways at different times and for a few minutes Brendon thinks maybe he's gotten the hang of it, thinks maybe he'll stop flinching inside every time a guy licks another guy's shoulder or runs a hand down his body and squeezes the crotch of his silver pants.

But then it's down to two guys on a roof, Curt the rock star and Arthur his biggest fan and they're so, so sweet almost, touching each other's faces gently and smiling at each other, so happy to have this tender quiet moment together in the middle of their fucked-up world, and Brendon says, "Is that --"

He feels the words spit out between squeezed lips, like he can still take them back if he wants to enough. Ryan turns towards him, just a few degrees but they're so close on the couch, wrists still touching, knees and legs and shoulders and Brendon can't take it back, not with Ryan's eyes so carefully watching and waiting and _this is a test, this is only a test_.

"Is it like that?" Brendon says, and Ryan's lips twitch, like it's not what he was expecting, like he's quietly impressed. Brendon hears his words reverberate through his head and realizes what he's said, how it sounds, what it says he thinks about Ryan, what it says about him that he wants to know, what it --

"Yeah," Ryan says. His eyes are fixed on Brendon's sleeve like he didn't mean to say it out loud either.

Brendon can hear himself breathe, can hear Spencer rolling onto his back to look at them. Spencer says Ryan's name like a warning, like he wants to say Brendon's the same way but doesn't know how yet.

"It can be, yeah," Ryan says and Brendon's face is hot, his whole spine feels like it's shaking and he has to, he has to get out of here, he can't, he doesn't know how to be nonchalant in this moment but he tries anyway, says something stupid like _cool_ or _yeah_ or _oh_ and counts every breath in and out through the last scenes and the credits and then stands up and fakes a smile and says, "Yeah, I should get home before my mom decides to call Brent's or something."

*

He barely gets his hand down his pants before he comes. He kicks off his jeans and pulls the covers back up and swallows down this noisy lump in his throat. It's a stupid rule but years and years of Sunday school and seminary and giving testimony and he can't act like he's unaware that even lusting violates the Law of Chastity, let alone acting on it, let alone _like this_.

When he's caught his breath he remembers that wet dreams were his first real intellectual win against the church. He was fourteen and freaked out and it wasn't like he was going to talk to his dad or the guys in Scouts and so he just did what he does now with the newspaper or the movies: he figured it out for himself. Because how could something completely unplanned and spontaneous and _natural_ \-- thank you very much, entire lack of sex ed, but Brendon does know how to use the internet -- how can something where your brain barely even cooperates with your body be enough to threaten your eternal soul? It just can't. Brendon Urie, 1; LDS, 0.

He falls asleep in the Edward Scissorhands t-shirt Ryan had casually complimented and wakes up proving his point, his mind full of long legs in silver pants and purple makeup smeared on white blouses and his body adding another stain to the sheets.

So he officially decides, screw this, it's his mind, he can think whatever he wants. It's his body, not God's, and he should make it feel as good as he knows how. He pushes off his shirt and slides his sticky boxers down his hips, shifts on the sheets and thinks about Curt and Arthur kissing on the roof. Touching Curt's long hair, his bony shoulders. His body's still catching up, so he lets his mind linger a little, lets his fantasy trip lazily along as they press their bare chests together, licking and moaning and reaching to feel more skin.

That's good, _that's good_ , he's hard again now, so dizzy and tingly and what if instead, maybe it's Curt and Brian Slade on stage, Curt on his knees rocking his hips up at Brian and his guitar, Curt rising up to lick the strings, sucking Brian's fingers into his mouth around the frets, flashbulbs popping, people screaming and cheering, two fingers now in his mouth and a hand around the back of his neck as Brian shoves his guitar out of the way and holds Curt's mouth to the Y of his lace-up leather pants.

Brendon turns over, burying his open mouth in the pillow, breathing hungrily through his nose like all he can smell is that leather, that sweat, like he might open Brian's pants with his teeth and, God, put his mouth right there, right there on stage in front of everyone, in front of God and everyone and Brendon squeezes his eyes closed harder and jerks himself as slow as he can, hard and torturous and so fucking good, it's good like this, God it would be so good, it can be, _it can be_ , Ryan said, and then he's kneeling at Ryan's feet and it's their show, it's their fans and their songs and Ryan rocks back on his heels and runs his fingers through Brendon's hair and pulls him forward and god, _Ryan_.

Brendon tries to moan into the sheets, into the sweaty curve of his own shoulder, swallowing his gasping breaths. He comes all over his stomach, his chest, up the inside of one arm. Finally he rolls over on his back, chest still rising and falling like the bellows of bagpipes, and stares open-mouthed at the ceiling. Jesus, _Ryan_. On his knees for Ryan or, God, Ryan on his knees for him and Brendon's dick gives a sympathetic shudder but fails to fully rise to the occasion. Way to keep up, Brendon wants to say, but he's only talking to his dick because he's strung out on adrenaline and freaked out and, fuck, kind of confused. His fingers are shaking as he tries to pinch the fabric of his discarded shirt and swipe things clean.

The knock on the door makes him wonder -- and sort of hope, for one long painful moment -- if it's possible he could be having a heart attack.

"Brendon, honey," his mom says, and he can hear her wedding ring clink against the handle.

No locks anywhere in the house, _this is a family, not a jail, we don't have secrets here_ and he yanks his blanket up high, breathes through is mouth like if he doesn't smell it his room won't reek of spunk.

She doesn't come in though, just knocks again and says, "Church, honey, time to get up."

He wants to try coughing, or puking, or just crying and saying awful, unforgivable things until she goes away, until she leaves him alone forever. But she just wanders on down the hall, calling something out to his dad, asking about the taillight on the van. He slides out of bed and shoves his dirty boxers under the mattress, the smeared shirt, too. He grabs a towel, listens until it sounds like the coast is clear, and dashes across the hall to the bathroom. His legs are still shaky when he turns on the water.

*

He waits until the last minute to come down, wearing jeans and a pink and blue striped shirt he bought all on his own last week. His parents are drinking milk -- _milk_ , Jesus, it's like a fucking mission pamphlet or something -- and his dad is spinning his keychain around the counter impatiently.

"I'm not going with you," Brendon says, voice even calmer than the dozen times he practiced in the shower.

"I ironed your white shirt," his mom says. "It's hanging above the washer."

"I'm not going," he repeats, and his mom goes a little pale, like she knows how serious he is, like she knows. He whispers, "I'm sorry," even though that wasn't part of the plan, that was on the don't list, _don't apologize to her, don't give in to him_.

Brendon's dad snatches up his keys. "Get dressed. We're going to be late."

"I have things to do. I -- I'm in a band. With Brent and these two guys he knows."

His dad says, "Brendon --" and _good, you remember, you remember who taught me to play the goddamned guitar in the first place, this is your fault, this is on you_.

"You're going to be late," Brendon says, and nods at the clock on the stove. His father looks down at his wristwatch like maybe Brendon's screwed that up, too.

They'll be late, everyone will notice, everyone will wonder, everyone will ask Where's Brendon? and if they go right now it'll be easier to blend, easier to slip right out at the end and let people assume he's sick, he's out of town looking at schools even though of course just like all their other boys he's going to UNLV and then his mission and then to BYU, hopefully, and of course he's fine, he's fine, he'll be here next Sunday.

This calculation, his parents' potential shame in the eyes of God and more importantly their bishop and ward, it's all key to the plan. Brendon's always thought more clearly in the shower, dreamed and planned and now actively plotted to make their worst worried prayers come true.

"We will discuss this when we get home," his dad says, like Brendon's a kid, like he colored on the tile floor or hid under his bed and wouldn't come out to brush his teeth.

"No," Brendon says, and makes himself stand up straight. "I'm not going back again."

"You will be here when we get back, and we will talk about it then." But this time there's a little bit of a shake to his dad's voice, a little bit of fear, and Brendon knows if he's committed any sin it's pride, the sheer fucking joy he feels in this moment at having scored a direct hit, at having pushed till it broke right where it hurt them the most.

His mom holds her purse white-knuckled and follows his father out. Brendon stares at the wall. He can't believe that actually worked. The car starts, the garage opener screams and lifts the door, closing again with a thunk a minute later. The house is silent.

Youngest Urie Breaks Mother's Heart, Pretends Not To Care.

*

He's not supposed to call Ryan before 11 on the weekends because Ryan's dad has made it pretty clear that after an electric guitar the telephone is his least favorite sound in the world. Luckily Brendon now has an unsupervised computer and Ryan is online and says, yeah, sure, I'll come get you, we can try talking that guy at the Orleans buffet into giving us the kid price again.

Brendon eats seven pancakes and sort of wants to puke as soon as he sets down his fork. Ryan leans back against the round booth and stretches one arm up along the back, tapping his fingers on the seam. "When do you have to be back sick in bed by?"

"I don't," Brendon says, and feels a smile break across his face before he puts any effort into it. He laughs then, throws his head back and fucking cackles in the busy buffet until Ryan gives in and chuckles, too. "I really don't," Brendon manages finally. "I'm not, I don't know, maybe I just won't go back at all."

"Wait," Ryan says, and stops smiling. "Seriously. What -- did something happen?"

"I told them." Brendon stabs what's left of a pancake with his cheap fork and the metal tines bend a little.

He looks up and Ryan is staring so carefully, so quietly, like a test, _this is only a test_.

"About the band," Brendon says, "uh, because I hadn't really before, they just thought Brent and I were working on something for class. But I'm totally over church, and I definitely don't want to go spend two years in, like, Lithuania or something and this isn't just -- we're not screwing around here, right, Ryan? We're really going to make this band work. Right?"

"Yes," he says, totally serious, looking Brendon right in the eye like they're making a deal, like it's a _business_ deal, like maybe they should spit and shake hands. Brendon trusts the determined fervor in Ryan's voice, trusts that Ryan wants to get away from his dad and that house at least as much as Brendon doesn't want to be like all the other Urie boys. Ryan and Spencer have spent years planning out what kind of band they're going to be and now Ryan goes after anyone who will listen, emailing and posting about how great they are, how amazing they sound, how much kids are going to love them. Brendon just wants to make all that true, wants to be a guy like Ryan who says things worth listening to, or at least wants to be the guy who makes everyone clap and scream and holler for more.

"Okay," Brendon says, and puts both his arms up behind him even though weirdly it makes him wonder whether he looks like this obscene Christ figure and his knees are spread wide open and God, he's in a fucking casino buffet and all the blinking lights and clinking change aren't enough to distract him from the sudden flash of Ryan down on his knees, right there. "Uh," he starts, but doesn't have a clue what else to say.

Ryan slouches, biting his lip, and this would be the worst time in the world for him to do some weird psychic routine and know what Brendon's thinking, it would be so fucking embarrassing and it would be pointless anyway because it's just Brendon's hyperactive mind with all these new movies and books stuck in his brain and it's not a test, it's their band, and they're serious, and --

"Have you ever been on top of this place?" Ryan asks, kneeling on the seat as he digs in his pocket for a tip.

"Uh, no, I never even --" _came here until you brought me last month_. Brendon shoves another bite of pancakes in his mouth so he can't talk and takes a last swallow of melted ice water and gets up.

"Come on," Ryan says, and grabs Brendon's arm.

*

"It's cheaper than the Stratosphere," Ryan says, with a shrug that on anybody else would look shy. On Ryan it's mutely defiant, all _I dare you not to be impressed_. He'd led them from the last elevator stop around through a fire door and up a set of metal stairs and, yeah, Brendon was impressed.

He leans as far over the concrete wall as he can without losing his balance, the sun-bleached subdivisions stretched out in every direction and the desert wrapped around it all like a blanket. "I like this better anyway," he says, and Ryan smiles, slides towards him until their shoulders are so close that Brendon can sense the straight line where Ryan's t-shirt bares his bicep, a sharp equator between fabric and skin.

"We can talk about it," Ryan says, staring straight ahead, "if you want."

Brendon breathes into the wind, open-mouthed and thirsty and feeling somehow both tiny and explosive in his own skin, like a rocket, like a nuclear bomb in a shallow desert grave. He says, "I never even, uh --"

"Yeah, I kinda figured." Ryan's gentle, not smug, and his hair is blowing in all directions as he squints into the sun.

Brendon just turns towards him, leans in, closes his eyes right as their lips touch.

Ryan sighs, hot breath whispering across Brendon's face, and Brendon licks his way into Ryan's open mouth, sucking Ryan's tongue between his teeth. He pushes his hips against Ryan's and slides a hand down Ryan's back, pulling him closer.

He may be a seventeen-year-old mostly obedient Mormon but he _has_ kissed people before and he knows how this goes, how he wants this to go anyway, he just _knows_.

"Brendon," Ryan says, breathing hard against his mouth, like he's genuinely surprised, like he can taste Brendon's own shock that somehow he managed to translate what he's imagined into what could be, Jesus, what could actually happen right here right now on this roof, they're even on a roof like in the movie and if Brendon had been smart enough to plan this part of his day this is exactly how it would have gone. He didn't even need a plan, though, because he had Ryan, Ryan who already knows what wanting _this_ feels like.

The worn cotton of Ryan's shirt is smooth under Brendon's fingers and he kisses Ryan again, harder this time, skimming his palm down Ryan's spine and inside the tiny gap at the back of his jeans, sharp bones and scorching skin making Brendon's hand tingle, making him shiver all over. He drags his tongue up the side of Ryan's throat and shifts his weight until one thigh is pressed tight between Ryan's legs.

He groans, rocking a little and burying his face in Ryan's neck because this, God, he had no idea what this was going to really feel like, their hips so hot and their dicks, that's totally Ryan's dick, and they're so hard against each other. His mouth hovers above Ryan's skin and he moans, "Oh God, Ryan, you're so --"

He falls back, staggering on his heels, almost going over backwards onto the ground, and only because Ryan's hands are still held out in front of him does he realize he was pushed. _Ryan_ pushed him, Ryan shoved him away and off and what the fuck, they were just getting to the good part, and --

"You can't just do that," Ryan says.

"But -- _what_?"

"I said if you wanted to talk --" Ryan wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and ducks his head down so his hair covers his eyes.

He doesn't mean that, no way, Brendon's not so new to the real world that he's confused about what someone looks like when they're enjoying something. He comes closer, reaching out to touch Ryan's belly with the back of his hand, gentle and easy like they're in a dream, like anything too strong or sudden will wake them both up.

Ryan slaps his hand away. "I said I don't want to."

"You --" Brendon hears his voice, all scratchy and throaty like he's trying to be sexy but he's not trying, not at all. His head is pounding and his whole body hurts, he aches everywhere and this makes no sense. Ryan is standing there with crossed arms and damp eyes and Brendon can't stop himself from saying, in that stranger's voice, "But you _like_ it."

Ryan flinches, guilt and superiority flickering across his face. "Fuck you, Brendon," he spits into the wind. "You don't even know what you're doing."

Absolutely nothing, no question Brendon's ever asked himself, not one of the last hundred nights he's spent staring at his ceiling thinking of ways to get out of everything his parents had planned for him -- none of that has given him any fucking idea what is going on right now, what Ryan is mad about, what Brendon's supposed to say.

"Anyway," Ryan shrugs carelessly, "now you have. Now you know what it's like."

"Oh, thanks for that, Ryan. Thank you _so much_ for making sure my need to figure shit out is tended to. That's so fucking selfless of you, Jesus, how can you possibly be such a martyr and not, you know, die of self-righteousness."

Ryan spins around and walks off, leaving him there.

*

Brendon doesn't try very hard to find a ride home because what's he going to do when he gets there, anyway, except fight with his parents, and he's pretty sure he's already had all the awful conversations he can handle for one day. He wanders around the casino floor, casually dodging security and practicing cover stories in his head. He's looking for his sister the cocktail waitress. He's in town with his card shark of a brother from Utah. He's lost and could they please page his boyfriend to come get him?

He goes to one of the restaurants and orders coffee and reads a copy of the Review-Journal someone left on the table. None of the articles have a single thing to do with him and he wonders what people pick up the paper and actually learn something they truly needed to know, like about life, about themselves.

He holds the gate at the guest pool for a couple of girls in bikinis and follows them in. He takes off his shoes, dangling his legs in the water as he tries and fails to mentally write a journal entry about the best-slash-worst day of his life. He finally gives in and calls Brent from a pay phone around five, except Brent's not answering his cell and Brendon's just not really sure what else to do, where else he can go.

He makes himself go outside and breathe in actual fresh air before he starts to cry or whatever would be worse than crying at how lamely desperate he feels. He collapses on a bench by valet parking and asks a stranger for a cigarette, but the guy wanders off before Brendon thinks to have him light it and it's not like he has matches on him or even knows how to smoke in the first place, so he just rolls the paper cylinder between his fingers until the tobacco all falls in little chunks onto the sidewalk.

Around seven a bellhop sits down next to him. Once he looks past the uniform Brendon realizes the guy isn't that old, maybe like 30. "Aren't you Kara's little brother?" he asks, smiling kindly, and Brendon just barely manages not to roll his eyes.

Great. He is so sick of everyone knowing the family he's trying to avoid. The Mormons are worse than the Mafia. He can't ever get away.

"Do you need a ride or something?"

"I was --" Brendon can feel his arm making this huge queeny wave and snatches it back, folding his hands together in his lap where they can't get him in any more trouble. "I'm just gonna take a cab," he says.

"Oh, no. Kara'd kill me if she heard I wouldn't drive her kid brother home. It's cool, I just got done working."

In the car Kyle tells Brendon that he and Kara went to high school together, that he's going to UNLV to become a pharmacist (which, seriously, what a weird thing to want to be, Brendon thinks as he stares dully out the window of Kyle's Toyota Tercel), that _his_ little brother is four grades behind Brendon and maybe Brendon can recommend a good elective for him to take freshman year.

"I take guitar," Brendon says, and Kyle turns down his street without asking for directions. "But ninth graders have to do marching band first."

"Oh, great," Kyle says, like Brendon's actually been helpful, like sarcasm has been bred out of good Mormons generations ago. He squints between gaps in streetlights and Brendon points at his house. "Yeah, now I remember. Tell your mom and dad hi, okay? I haven't seen them since the ward got split up."

Brendon says yeah, sure, thanks as he reaches for the handle.

"Hey Brendon."

Brendon sighs and rests his knee against the door. Thus begins his night of lectures, differentiated from his afternoon of lectures by the religious themes and a total lack of kissing.

"You should -- be a little careful, all right? There's a lot of people who'd see a nice kid like you sitting all alone and, you know."

Kyle looks like he's trying to tell Brendon the truth about Santa Claus, like _this hurts me more than it hurts you, kid_.

"A lot of people out there aren't all that nice," Kyle says, and something in his worried eyes makes Brendon think of Ryan, of Ryan slapping his hand away, of Ryan's quiet wariness.

He just wants to go inside and crawl into bed and wake up tomorrow like today never happened, like he can just go to church with his family and not end up worse off than he started. Which is an even stupider fantasy than Santa Claus.

He walks in a straight line between perfectly edged halves of the front lawn, Disgraced Son Returns Home, Awaits Punishment And Inevitable Parental Condemnation.

Kyle doesn't drive off until Brendon opens the front door.

  
 _ **"Drugs," my mom said, "we could deal with."**_  
His father takes him to seminary in the morning, not even pretending he trusts Brendon to go on his own. Brendon survives a lesson on Abraham the same way he'd gotten through the night before: staring at a blank spot on the far wall and singing songs in his head.

Here, away from his mom's "we were just so _worried_ " and his dad's "as long as you're under my roof" he barely bothers to pretend he's paying attention, spreading his fingers across the desk like a keyboard so he can properly accompany his mental opera.

That stupid line where Tyler Durden asks how much you can know about yourself if you've never been in a fight is stuck in his head on a loop, and he wonders whether everything that happened yesterday means now he knows more about himself or if he's actually gone backwards, if his whole fucking life is just some cruel nihilistic joke and nothing will ever change.

He walks across the street with Jeremy, who's been in his ward and half his classes at school since they were kids. Jeremy's a decent guy, way too smart to be such a Peter Priesthood, but usually he doesn't take it personally when other people stray. "Is something wrong?" Jeremy asks as they climb the steps to their lockers. "You missed yesterday and you're being all quiet today."

"So _obviously_ something's wrong," Brendon says, but feels shitty when Jeremy looks sorry he asked. "My parents freaked out, uh, because I'm in a band. I'm the singer in a, like, a rock band, I guess." It still sounds weird to say, especially because there's a tiny terrified part of him that isn't sure it's still true.

"Oh," Jeremy says, like he doesn't get it. Brendon's not sure if he's puzzled why Brendon's parents should care or why Brendon would want to in the first place. "With who else?"

"Brent Wilson and these two other guys you don't know."

He doesn't mean it to be some kind of code but the way Jeremy nods he obviously translated that to _not LDS_.

"The band is really awesome," Brendon says, "seriously, we're pretty good and the songs are, like, totally danceable."

"What, like the Killers?"

"Well --"

For like a month last summer all anybody seemed to talk about was whether Brandon Flowers was making them all look bad or was actually a good way for people to see how diverse and different Mormons could be or whether he should just admit his obvious immorality and leave the church altogether or if someone in Vegas was going to do, like, a home visit and get him back on track.

"I guess, musically," Brendon says, "yeah, kind of." Nobody else from church ever even listened to the album, changing the channel if the single came on the radio, like somehow they'd be tainted just by knowing what the fuck they were talking about.

Jeremy shoves three books in his backpack. "Of course your parents are going to freak. The Killers are totally gay."

Brendon's pretty sure Jeremy doesn't mean they're lame. "Well, yeah," he says, because well, yeah, they kind of are.

Jeremy laughs like it was a punchline, like they agree, like they're on the same side.

All Brendon can think of is the taste of syrup and Ryan's tongue in his mouth and Ryan's hipbone pressed into his stomach. He feels like his breath has been shoved back down his throat.

"Yeah," he says again, and slams his locker so hard Jeremy flinches. "So what if they are?"

*

Brent drives them to practice because if Brendon goes home and tries to borrow the van there's no way he'll get back out alive.

"Did you like Moulin Rouge as much as Ryan?" Brent asks as they wait for the Port of Subs guy to ring them up.

For a second Brendon is completely thrown by the question, because how is he supposed to even understand how he feels about Ryan, let alone explain it to Brent of all people? And then, once he gets it, he just feels stupid and embarrassed and like it's been twelve years since he even went over to Spencer's.

"I liked Nicole Kidman," he answers instead, grabbing his sandwich and heading back out to the car.

All afternoon Ryan acts like nothing happened, and because Brendon can't think of what the hell else they should do he goes along with it. At least that means he's still in the band.

At one a.m., after he'd jerked off and still couldn't fall asleep, he'd snuck downstairs and onto the computer, since it was clear the non-negotiable terms of his grounding included an online ban for the rest of his natural life.

He spent way too long staring at the pictures Ryan had posted of himself to LJ and wondering whether his dad might actually kill him if he jerked off again and got caught like this. Eventually he settled for reading the last year of Ryan's entries, pretending he was a private detective and Ryan was his case, like there were clues laid out that could explain what the hell had made him run off like that.

Well, okay, so Ryan ran off because Brendon was an asshole, but before that, before the yelling, when he'd just...stopped. What had that been about?

Brendon was about ready to give in and crawl up to his bed when he found a picture post with fourteen comments from the same user, some guy whose profile said he was studying film and whose obsession with Ryan stretched over a good three months from the first casual "you look real cool in that shirt" to some point after they'd obviously started hanging out in person.

He didn't show up anywhere on Ryan's journal after last January, just, boom, gone, not on the friends list, like suddenly they weren't speaking any more, like --

Like they'd broken up.

Brendon checked again. The guy was twenty-five and, honestly, not just because things made a lot more sense that way, he seemed like a real asshole. Plus in one of his public galleries, dated December 19, 2003, there was a photo of Ryan sitting on his lap, wearing his favorite Fall Out Boy shirt and a shy smile. The guy had his hand on Ryan's knee, like _mine, mine_ , and Brendon wanted to punch him right in his smirking face.

Brendon had carefully wiped the browser history, turned off the computer and gone to his room. The way Ryan had talked about guys was like it was good, like he'd liked it and Brendon might too. Brendon had no idea why he'd thought it was that simple.

They play their three songs five times each, until Brent starts to gripe about the time. Ryan says they should start practicing both Saturdays and Sundays, that Pete might come hear them play soon. Spencer gives Brendon a careful look.

"Fine," he says, "I'm not going to church anymore anyway."

Ryan has the decency not to act surprised.

"I told my parents to get used to the idea that I'm not really turning out how they wanted," Brendon says, and only when Spencer's eyes widen does he realize how serious he sounds, how confident. At least Project Brendon has been good for something.

*

He doesn't feel very fucking confident sitting in Spencer's garage trying to play along with a crappy Casio that currently holds all of their pre-programmed tracks and at least fifty percent of their potential for a record deal.

Pete Wentz is leaning against a wall with a completely mysterious look on his face, bobbing his head now and then but not smiling. Ryan is hunched over his acoustic, tiny and insular around the guitar, and Brendon throws his shoulders back again and tries to take up more space, tries to make them seem and sound bigger than they are.

They're just two guys and a few songs in a garage. Brendon only wants a fair shot at something, something better than this, this audition he found out about two hours ago because it turns out Pete wasn't quite as busy recording in LA as Ryan had thought or bothered to communicate with the rest of his band, half of which is either out of town or previously committed to providing cheap child care.

They're not ready, is the thing, not close to it, they've never done this for anyone and this is where they start, with Pete Wentz making a four-hour drive for this, _for this_. He should at least be getting a real show, a full performance, something more impressive than a couple of kids with guitars.

Pete should be seeing a band, hearing Spencer's wild fills and Ryan's wailing electric and Brent's thudding bassline and Brendon's -- well. Brendon has no idea what he's supposed to be doing to make this unforgettable, to make them irresistible.

He knocks his shoulder against Ryan's until Ryan turns his face a few degrees, and then it's better, then they're at least playing for each other. Brendon's used to singing for Ryan while Ryan nods to himself and bites his bottom lip. Brendon's used to watching Ryan's fingers move over the frets and hoping he'll look at up, that they'll share this moment, that they'll be the kind of show no one can tear their eyes away from.

Right now they just have an audience of one, one plus all the things Pete's got in his back pocket, all the opportunities and the contract and the labels and money to record and tour and get the fuck started with their real lives. He tries to at least catch Pete's attention, to smile or something, but now Pete's the one staring at Ryan's hands, eyes narrow and intense. Brendon watches Ryan peek out from under his hair and Pete doesn't stop staring, a smirk riding the corners of his mouth until Ryan looks back down at his guitar and then over at Brendon, eyebrows furrowed together like he needs something, almost like he needs help. Ryan, who never needs help with anything, who's got everything planned out and a million different versions of the same annoyed glare ready for any obstacle, anybody who makes things more difficult. Ryan needs his help.

He doesn't know what to do except close his eyes and throw his head back and sing the shit out of Ryan's words, like he understands them, like they're just as much his as Ryan's, like Pete would be a fucking idiot to walk out of here without giving them a deal. Brendon's played recitals and solos in band concerts and he tells himself it's the same, it's just notes and melodies and then it's done before you're even sure it really happened.

It's not the same at all, though, that's just another scared little lie. Doing Ryan's songs, even just in this garage on a minute's notice, it feels different, bigger than he'd expected, bigger than he'd had any idea of when he said yes, he'd be in their band, when he said sure, he'd be the singer. God, this is what it's like to be a singer, this rush, this confidence that people are listening, that they're watching.

He opens his eyes again and Pete _is_ watching him, a long heavy-lidded look like he sees something he likes, like he sees them. He's looking at them both like they're a _band_. That makes it all very real, and very, very scary, how much he wants this to work, for all of them, for Ryan, for himself. Brendon wants this to work. He wants Pete to grin and say, "Yeah, this works, let's do this." He wants to do this forever.

The song ends, though. At least they manage to end on the beat together. Brendon swallows a greedy gulp of oxygen. Pete grins, big teeth taking over as he says, "Yeah, hell yeah, that was some -- that was something, shit, yeah."

If it were just them, just the band, Ryan would be the first to say it sucked, that they could do better. Brendon pretty much lives in a constant state of knowing they could do better, that they have to be better if they want this to work. But here they are, with Pete, who smiles through his shitty backhanded compliment, and Ryan, who just lights up, huffing out a relieved sigh.

"Fuck, man," Pete says, and Brendon braces himself for the easy let down, for the soft shove of rejection. "I'm so totally starving. You guys wanna go get something to eat?"

*

Spending forty or more hours a week with the guys, stuck in hot garages or grandmother's living rooms or run-down vacant stores where they have to do everything without amps or air conditioning because there's no electricity pretty much sucks all the fun out of being in a band.

But Pete is serious about getting them signed, Ryan swears, and because Brendon doesn't like to think too closely about Ryan and the time he spends online talking to people who might be interested in the band's music or maybe just the guitarist, he officially decides to take Ryan at his word and hope there's an end in sight. It's probably better that no one has any time or energy left over for movie nights or trips to the thrift store or even hanging out except for when there are instruments in hands and scowls on everyone's faces.

He and Ryan are still sticking to Operation Never Happened with a near-perfect rate of success. Once Brendon caught Ryan staring at his mouth while he was singing, and then Brendon forgot the words, and then Ryan tripped backwards over his cords and Spencer crashed a cymbal and said, "What the fuck, you two?" and they both said "nothing" at the exact same time and in the exact wrong tone of voice. But Spencer let it go and that was that.

Brendon tells himself he's glad it's worked out this way, because the entire point of him and Ryan even knowing each other is the band, their band, making their band a real job with a real contract and an album and a tour and music that sounds how they want. The point is getting away from their parents and their stupid schools and a city built for gamblers and whores and the tourists who can't admit they want to be either without having to leave their hometowns and come to his.

Okay, he's starting to sound like Ryan's lyrics, but the point is Ryan's issues are _Ryan's_ issues and God knows Brendon's still got plenty of his own.

*

After about three weeks, his dad decides Brendon can be allowed to walk to seminary again. Brendon has stopped asking permission to go out for practice and ducked out of the house every Sunday before his mom can guilt him into church, even though it means he hasn't been allowed to use the phone or internet or watch TV in return. He knows his parents are spending their nights in serious discussion of Brendon's fate, probably with guest speakers and special illustrated charts, but it's still better than having to sit through it himself. He's not planning to extend his own torture any more than is absolutely required.

His first day of morning freedom, he stops Jeremy at the door of the ward and asks him to tell the teacher he's got extra practice for the spring concert and won't be in seminary for a while. Jeremy says, "Do you really think that's --" and Brendon shrugs.

"I'm not going anyway," he says. "So tell them whatever you want. I'm going to be eighteen in two months and I don't need a temple recommend because I'm not going on a mission. I'm in a band and -- I'm done with this."

He leaves Jeremy and crosses the street to the school, which is still half empty. He goes in to see if Ms. Harris was serious about giving him some extra vocal coaching.

*

His father doesn't find out for a month, which means Jeremy must have covered for him after all. It goes a little worse than expected. Or maybe he'd just assumed they had a few more rounds of this left, this middle ground where they fight and he gets put on restriction and goes back to doing what he wants and nobody's happy. Brendon hadn't realized they had moved past that.

Apparently they're way past that. End Times Near; Brendon Confesses Agnosticism, Immorality.

"Maybe you should take a year," his mother tries, "and don't even go to school, just take some time for yourself and --"

That's how he knows she's really desperate, that she thinks him skipping college is a better idea than what he's got planned.

His dad says, "If you think we're going to pay for you to lay around and waste your calling, waste all the talent God gave you on some desperate teenagers who don't know right from wrong --"

He doesn't tell his dad he'd been skimping on his tithing for almost a year. It added a nice bonus to the couple thousand in his savings account from working the last two summers, saving for a car he's been too grounded to buy. And even though he'll never get hired back for another summer of surveying without an okay from his dad, he's been dropping off applications for shitty part-time jobs every afternoon for the last week. If his dad thinks Brendon actually wants to take a cent from him he hasn't heard a damned word Brendon's been saying.

"We're just worried," his mom says, "Brendon, can't you see how you've changed so much in the last year?"

He smiles and stands up. "Yes," he says.

"Those boys -- I know they're your friends, and I'm sure they all have good qualities, but -- I think they've made you different."

"No," Brendon says, "that was all me," and tries to tamp down the surge of pride beating through his veins. "I wanted to figure out who I really was, and the first thing I realized was that I have spent my entire life being told what to think and what to believe and how to do everything just because it's the Mormon thing to do and --" He's yelling now, but he can't help it. "And I don't want to do those things, and I don't want to be that person. I found this really great thing, this amazing band with these awesome guys who are like me, they think about things like I do and they want to know _more_ about the world, not less, and if you don't like them, if you think they're immoral, then you might as well go ahead and think the same about me. Because I am, I haven't been --"

"Brendon!" His mother gets up, clamping a hand over his mouth before he confesses some specific sin. "You can go to Bishop Johnson and talk to him. You should, you --"

Brendon's dad has a perfectly pure tenor, always gets all the good solos in church choir, and it rings out strong and heart-stopping when he yells, "That's enough!"

Brendon grabs his backpack from where he'd dropped it by the couch when his evening turned into the Council Of Disappointment. "Yeah," he says, "I think so too. This is enough." He'll walk down to the am/pm and call somebody to come get him. He can crash at Spencer's if he has to, Ryan's been doing that a lot these days himself, Brendon's the only one even bothering to still go to classes and at this precise moment even that seems like a dubious decision.

"If you are not interested in being a part of this family," his father says, "then maybe you should start making your own plans."

Brendon strides right up to him, gets in his face, and notices for the first time they're the exact same height. "What do you think I've been doing all this time? Wasting my days, slumming around and sinning with a bunch of lost souls? I have plans. I have done nothing _but_ plan how the hell to get out of here and away from you and all your ideas about me since --"

"Then maybe you should just go," his dad says, and it starts off yelling but ends in a sad whisper. His eyes are wet, and he'll take it back if Brendon wants him to, he can tell.

Brendon's arms are shaking, and his legs, and his tears are pooling in a wet circle around the neck of his t-shirt and all the times he thought how this would go, how he'd get away from them, it never hurt like this.

"I'm sorry," he says, and means it, and walks away, yanking the front door open.

Ryan is standing on his front porch, his jaw dropped in an almost comical manner, like he should have a speech bubble with nothing but question marks.

"Oh," Brendon says, "well, good, I was just about to call and ask you to pick me up, so."

Ryan stares past him into the house, where Brendon's mother is weeping noisily, dramatically, and Brendon's father is glowering at the two of them like he knows, like he just _knows_ there's even more to this story than he feared all along.

"So let's go," Brendon says, and points at Ryan's car parked at the curb.

"I came to tell you," Ryan says, and Brendon's pretty sure now he's the one with little stars floating around his head because there are so many ways that sentence could end, so many reasons Ryan could have come over without calling, without being asked, things he could be there to say to Brendon about Brendon or the band or them or --

"Pete sent it, man," Ryan says, fast, and then smiles wider than Brendon's ever seen. "The contract."

Brendon drops his backpack. "We have a record deal?"

Ryan nods.

"We have a fucking record deal?" he yells, and his mother says his name sharply from the couch but, "Holy shit, we have a -- we're going to make an album, we're going to, oh my God!"

Brendon's arms are wrapped tight around Ryan and they're jumping up and down on his doorstep because holy shit, it's real, they're in a band, they're a _band_.

Finally Ryan shoves him away, but nicely, gently, with a goofy grin still plastered to his face. "I know," Ryan says, and yeah, he does, Ryan knows how this feels, how much they need this.

"So," Brendon says. "So then I'm really leaving." He turns towards his parents. They stare at him, finally, finally silent, looking at him like they have no idea who he is, where their good kind faithful son is, no idea who this person is who's replaced him.

He grabs Ryan's elbow and says, "I'll come on Sunday and get what I need."

He closes the door behind him. "I can't believe you just did that," Ryan says, full of what sounds like genuine awe, and Brendon giggles like a loon, mind-wiping shock and full-on panic running neck and neck for control of his emotional state. He needs to howl at the moon. He needs to eat something really sugary and run around in circles on a roof with a view. He needs to let his fingers slide down from Ryan's elbow to squeeze his hand just once before letting go and stepping back.

"I know," Brendon says.

 

 _ **Tell me that story over and over. Then we'll figure out who you're going to be.**_  
At crappy apartment complex number seven, Brendon gives up the last ghost of his integrity and says yes, he's totally eighteen. Yes, he has a full-time job unrelated to gaming or other forms of euphemistically named entertainment. Yes, he's a good kid who gets good grades, got them, he means, before he graduated last year, now he just works and reads and is really quiet and clean, he swears.

The manager is grandma-aged and Brendon's pretty sure she just decides to ignore his shitty lies out of the goodness of her heart, and so, in the spirit of things, he mentally kisses off his five hundred dollar cash deposit and takes the keys gratefully.

He pays to turn on the electricity and a cell phone and thank God all the hot or cold showers he could ever need are included in rent because between that and learning the hard way exactly how much it costs to keep a teenage boy from being hungry all the time there's only so far his smoothie elbow grease is going to go.

He rescues a futon from a premature death in the alley out back, him and Brent straining under the dense weight of the mattress as they drag it upstairs. It's his sole piece of furniture, so on nights when Ryan crashes there they lie shoulder to shoulder and Brendon doesn't sleep so much as hover between abject horror and silent misery. It's enough to make him reconsider the sheer relief of eternal salvation.

But he's pretty sure then he'd have to give up what is so far the best part of having left home, this full-on hurtling towards the guy he knew he could become if he just got away long enough to hear himself think. He and Ryan stay up talking until four a.m. on a Tuesday arguing about existentialism -- existentialism, Jesus, Brendon sometimes wants to pinch himself because this is so much fucking better, even the disagreements are better, truer than another bullshit reading of Scripture everyone's only allowed to agree with in safely different ways. Now he gets Ryan and his quietly wild brain full of ideas all to himself for, like, hours and hours on end.

The next night he chases Ryan around the apartment insisting it's his turn to pick which CD they're playing next on his laptop until Ryan trips him, tackling him to the thin carpet. Brendon flips him easily, pinning Ryan's wrists by his sides. "Never got to be king of the hill before," he pants, because with three older brothers and a sister used to riding herd on all of them he didn't come close to winning a fight before their folks broke it up.

Ryan shakes his head a little, hair brushing the insides of Brendon's arm. "Our little boy's all grown up."

"Oh shut up, you old whore," Brendon says, and pushes Ryan down harder, rubbing him against the floor. He's going to give Ryan a nasty case of carpet burn, going to prove who's boss, and the jolt of his hips pressing flush to Ryan's is as unexpected as the words he just said.

Ryan's mouth opens in a perfect O of surprise, like he suddenly played a note he'd been searching for but never actually thought he'd find. Under the shock is a hot current of -- God, Brendon's so sure it's desire, even though he has almost nothing real, nothing in real life to compare it to.

Ryan gasps wetly, as if he's thirsty, and Brendon says, "I didn't mean -- you're not," and Ryan tilts his head back, his whole body arcing up like it's being pulled from a single point above them both, a thread stringing them together with one tug of a needle. Brendon slides his arm between Ryan and the floor, cradling Ryan's back and spreading his hand wide between Ryan's shoulderblades. He presses his forehead to Ryan's and waits, desperation lurking in his bones, wanting so badly to move but he won't, _he won't_ this time unless he's sure, until Ryan --

"Please," Ryan whispers, and Brendon crushes them both into the floor, biting Ryan's lip as he hangs his arms around Brendon's neck. Brendon wedges his knees between Ryan's legs, which fall open easily, so easily, God, he wants this, Ryan _wants_ this, Brendon realizes, even though Brendon's still not sure what this is. Ryan's tongue surges into his mouth, not so much a question as a request, a demand, and Brendon uses the hand not trapped under them to lift Ryan's leg higher, help bend it around his waist so he can get them lined up, so he can thrust up against the curve of Ryan's hips and feel the answering twitch in Ryan's throat.

Ryan slides one hand down Brendon's back, over the side of his ribs and between their stomachs and Brendon stares stupidly at a splotch of reddened skin on Ryan's cheek as Ryan shoves his own shirt up around his armpits and then does the same to Brendon's, shimmying and scooting them both until their bare chests are damp and sticky against each other. Ryan digs his heel into Brendon's ass, urging him on, whimpering, "Don't stop, don't --" as he unbuttons his own jeans.

"No," Brendon agrees, and pushes up just far and long enough to get his pants open, too. Then they're both right there, dicks hanging out, and Ryan arcs up again until they touch, soft hot skin to skin. Brendon hears a ripped-out, hungry moan but Ryan's mouth is shut, his eyes squeezed closed and, Jesus, _he_ must be the one making that noise, that must be the noise he makes when he's having sex. Jesus, he's having _sex_. Oh thank God, thank God, finally.

Ryan's fingers bump between them, knuckles grazing the side of his dick and Brendon's and this is nothing, _nothing_ like anything Brendon's ever dreamed or seen or read about or imagined, how could he have had any idea just how fucking much he was going to love this, _this_ , Ryan, and Brendon licks Ryan's jaw and comes all over them both with a grunt. Ryan makes a tiny crying noise in his throat and, Jesus, his come is hot, just like a degree warmer than Brendon's but, oh God, who knew that was even possible, how could he have known, he's not sure he knew anything at all in the world before this moment.

"The world is so awesome," he mutters against Ryan's neck, rolling on one side so he can extract his sore little smashed arm. Ryan sits up, wiggling free as Brendon rests his cheek against the carpet.

"I'm not sleeping on the floor," Ryan says. His blue shirt slides back down his chest.

Brendon kicks his pants all the way off, delicately tucking his dick back into his boxers. "Uh, okay. Are we sleeping now?"

"I am," Ryan says, and Brendon rolls onto his back to watch Ryan rise, somehow unfolding himself up so gracefully, unbuttoned jeans and all.

He stares down at Brendon and then turns and walks over to the bed. He sits on the edge of the mattress, very still and quiet, and finally Brendon gets up and goes into the bathroom. He wipes the come off his stomach with a washcloth, dries himself with a towel, pees and brushes his teeth.

When he comes out Ryan's in his boxers and t-shirt, lying on his side, frozen like he's on mute. Brendon lies down next to him carefully, making sure they don't touch, and counts to a thousand over and over until he falls asleep.

He eventually wakes up and, of course, _of course_ , because welcome to his new fucking confusing life, his leg is twisted around Ryan and his erection is pushing into Ryan's thigh and his mouth is full of the soft cotton of Ryan's shirt. He feels his body jerk in surprise too late to stop it and Ryan's eyes pop open, white and wide like Bambi or something, like he's expecting to get shot.

But Brendon had at least 12,000 long seconds last night to figure out how he'd handle things differently if he had another chance, and this, this is definitely another fucking chance, so he swallows down his fear and smiles, leans in and licks Ryan's jaw, pushing his fingers up under Ryan's shirt like he can play a scale on his bony ribs. Ryan is still stiff-backed and big-eyed but he doesn't try to get away. One of his hands falls gently on Brendon's shoulder, touching him like maybe there's an answer there, like he's trying to understand what's happening.

 _Oh_ , Brendon thinks, and bends his head to push Ryan's shirt up with his nose, mouthing every inch of skin as it's revealed. He smiles as long fingers push into his hair, holding him closer. Maybe Ryan isn't sure what should happen next, either, or he knows how it works but not why, not why it feels so goddamned urgent all of a sudden.

Ryan's thumb drags over Brendon's ear, hot and hard and with just enough pressure that Brendon _knows_ , he's suddenly sure what should happen next. He ducks his nose into Ryan's bellybutton, traces his fingers down the fine line of hair that disappears into Ryan's boxers, hooks his thumb into the elastic and eases them down, over Ryan's hipbones, over his thighs and knobby knees and slender ankles and onto the floor.

Brendon kneels between Ryan's legs and runs his hands up the inside of Ryan's thighs, watching as Ryan stretches his neck out on the pillow and breathes weakly through his mouth. He's, Jesus, Ryan's so fucking beautiful and he's just laid out on Brendon's bed, waiting for Brendon to touch him, waiting for Brendon to touch him _more_ and Brendon's new to this but he'd like to think he's not a complete fucking idiot.

He wraps his hand around the base of Ryan's dick and Ryan bucks up, groans, almost fucking _growls_ , and Brendon just bends down and opens his mouth and hopes for the best. He looks up after a while, when his jaw starts to hurt, and finds Ryan staring down at him, fingers hovering just above like he wants to touch but no, no, but he totally _can_ , God, Brendon wants him to touch. He pulls off just enough to nod, to say, "Ryan, you can, come on --" and when Ryan just chokes down a shocked sound but doesn't move Brendon reaches up and takes Ryan's hand and plants it on his head.

It doesn't take long after that, and Brendon's still not totally sure he knows what he's doing but he's not sure how much Ryan cares, either, the way he's panting and his hips are rolling around and Brendon has to keep trying to pin him to the bed with his elbow so things don't get really painful. Brendon watches as Ryan's t-shirt, God, he's still wearing his t-shirt, and the hem is fluttering across his stomach as he breathes in sharply and jerks forward and then he's coming, and Brendon is, Jesus, he's supposed to swallow, he thinks, and so he does, he tries, he gets most of it and licks up what he missed as soon as he's caught his breath.

Ryan is holding one arm across his face, biting his lip and breathing raggedly and Brendon's so hard, he's so fucking hard he kind of can't believe he didn't come already just from the friction of the sheets, just from feeling Ryan's dick in his mouth and his hands in his hair and Jesus, he's got to, he's got his hand on his own dick now and he sits up on his knees and stares down Ryan's long body, thinks about climbing up and pushing himself in between Ryan's lips, about balancing himself with one hand on the wall as he fucks down into Ryan's mouth.

He comes on Ryan's stomach and Ryan drops his arm from his eyes, pushing to his elbows, and snaps his jaw shut, like maybe he knows what Brendon was thinking, like maybe he can read it on his face.

"I can't believe I never tried that before," Brendon says, and he can hear the giddy laugh in his voice. "We have to -- let's just, can we just stay here and, like, do everything I've never done before, okay? Okay?"

He leans forward to kiss Ryan, he wants to kiss him like this, with the taste still in his mouth, but Ryan turns his head away, bends a sharp shoulder between them so it pokes into Brendon's collarbone and keeps him away.

"What?" Brendon bumps his hip against Ryan's. He tries to kiss Ryan's neck and Ryan turns the other way so Brendon's left with a mouthful of dirty hair. Ryan's body is limp, like he's playing dead, like he's trying not to be noticed, and finally Brendon slides off him, curling up along his side. "What," he whispers.

Ryan clears his throat and says, carefully, like he's been repeating it in his head the last five silent minutes, "Maybe you could make, like, a whole list, you know? Of everything you haven't done, and then you can do it to me, and then you'll be sure."

And then Ryan sits up, tears off his t-shirt, throws it at Brendon and strides to the bathroom, totally naked, his shoulders cross and tight and his bare body glowing in the morning sun. It's this totally beautiful, completely fucked-up picture and it doesn't matter that Brendon doesn't have a camera because he's pretty sure he won't be able to forget this moment, no matter how much he tries, no matter how much he doesn't, because for all that this situation sucks it's still the most amazing thing he's ever seen.

*

The shitty part is how Brendon totally does have a list.

Project Brendon, especially the Ryan Influences Remix, was all about listing things he'd never done, things he wouldn't do, things he couldn't wait to try. Ryan's not on the list himself, not exactly, except, Brendon guesses, sort of generically now as part of Have As Much Sex As Possible, and somehow that makes it worse, makes Ryan more right.

It was just a list, like his list of shocking books and R-rated movies and countries to visit while not proselytizing a religion. He can't help it if spending every minute with the band means they're the ones who are helping him check off all the important moments. He can't help it if Ryan's right there every time he's overwhelmed by the need to reach out and experience first-hand what it _feels_ like.

They're almost an hour late leaving for practice by the time Ryan is done sculpting his hair, buckling his belt, tying his shoes, eating a bowl of cereal, all so excruciatingly slowly it's like he's trying to torture Brendon. Maybe he's trying to torture them both. He doesn't say a word and he looks at least as miserable as Brendon feels.

In Ryan's car on the way over Brendon turns down the music and says, "I don't want to be the kind of guy who uses people, like, in order to work their own stuff out. I mean, I thought you --"

Ryan stares straight ahead at the road.

"But don't worry about it, it won't happen again," Brendon says, and twists the knob until the windows shake from the sound.

When they finally show up, even Brent looks annoyed, gripes about how he thought they'd agreed they were always starting on time now, no matter what, no matter who was missing, no matter who didn't answer their goddamned cell phones. Ryan's wasn't charged; Brendon's is somewhere on his apartment floor because he never remembers it without Ryan saying something and Ryan definitely wasn't saying anything. He's not going to explain all that to Brent and Spencer.

Spencer just says, "Ryan," not _are you okay_ , not _hey you're looking kind of kind of fucked up, buddy, anything I should know_ , not anything but their own eternal secret fucking language and Brendon says, "I'm thinking of changing my name to Mr. Invisible, you know, like for my stage name, what do you guys think? You can still totally call me Brendon, of course, but for everyone else --"

Spencer says, "Shut up," and Brendon drops down onto the piano bench.

"Let's start with the new chorus," Ryan says, and Spencer kicks into the count-off.

*

Brendon can handle the silent treatment. He has three brothers, a sister, two passive-aggressive worshipful parents and about seven million cousins and until he actually left home all major transgressions were punished accordingly. Now, of course, at least once a week some good soldier stops him in the hall at school or comes by work and tries to convince him he'd feel better if they just prayed together.

Being shunned by Ryan doesn't last long enough either.

"No, God, Brendon, you have to sing it _right_ ," he says, again, again and again, even though he's completely shitty at elaborating in any meaningful way, "or there's just no goddamned point in singing it at all."

"You're being ridiculous," Brendon says, again and again. "And anyway it's the same fucking lyric five times in a row, so excuse me if I haven't managed to isolate the precise subtleties of one tantrum from another."

Ryan narrows his eyes. "It's four times. Four times, and all you have to do is pay attention to the fucking words instead of just opening your mouth and letting whatever bullshit comes out rule the day and you'd be able to tell the difference."

"Oh, I'm the one who's full of shit? I am? That's fucking rich, seriously, given that you're the one who --"

Spencer stands up, foot coming clumsily down on the pedal and crashing the high-hat together, and Brent knocks Brendon in the shoulder, hard and sharp like maybe they're going to have an actual fight.

They have the same argument all week, like they don't know Spencer and Brent are going to stop it, like they're actually arguing about the music. Mostly Brendon's scared deep down that Ryan's right about that part, too.

It's not like Brendon's ever been in a band before. Ryan's probably not wrong to be so fussy, to put his singer on the spot. Brendon is going to be the one in front of the audience, the _frontman_ , the one people throw shit at when they fuck up. He could barely get Pete to look at him when he was standing three feet away so how he's supposed to hold a whole crowd captive like he's fucking David Bowie or Freddie Mercury or something is completely beyond him still.

But instead of making it possible for Brendon to, like, ask his own goddamned band what kind of performance they'd like him to attempt, Ryan keeps acting like Brendon is a monster. Ryan will apparently never forgive him for running with what seemed at the time to be a pretty friendly invitation, and he seems to have no plans to take a day off from complaining about Brendon's vocal ability either, and there's just only so much Brendon can take.

"Do you think people are stupid, Ryan? Do you think they can't understand the fucking deeper meaning of your lyrics if you don't repeat them over and over and over --"

"Not people," Ryan says, in that smooth, dead monotone Brendon's had just about enough of. "I don't think people are stupid, no."

"You're even repeating your fucking insults now, that's great, that's --" Brendon doesn't know how to throw a punch like it counts, like he means it in anything but self-defense, so he stands up and kicks over his stool with an angry sweep of his leg.

Spencer chucks one drumstick at them with a frustrated shout. It hits Ryan's back, and Ryan flinches and squeaks like a girl, like he's been stabbed. "Ryan," Spencer says, and it's not close to the apology Ryan's clearly expecting. Spencer blows out a breath through his nose, like some insanely pissed-off dragon who might just light them all on fire with his next words. But all he says, never looking away from Ryan, is, "Let it go." He points at Ryan with the other drumstick still in his hand, but his knuckles are tight and Brendon doesn't have a lot of confidence he won't throw that, too. "You," Spencer says, at Ryan. "Let it go."

"Great," Brendon says, "that's just great," because it's so fucking obvious that Ryan told Spencer the whole story, except who knows what his version sounds like, how much of a desperate horny freak Brendon has become in translation. "I _said_ I was sorry, I said that --"

Ryan is still staring at Spencer when he says, "No you didn't. He didn't."

"Well I am, believe me, I am so fucking sorry that I ever --"

"Fine," Spencer says. "There you go," he tells Ryan.

Brent is looking at the door like he might walk out and never come back, which now that Brendon considers it, isn't such a bad fucking idea.

"In case you assholes have forgotten," Spencer says, "we have six weeks to get our shit written and ready to record. We need, like, a dozen songs and _somehow_ even the three that were in good shape before are falling the fuck apart. So if someone other than me and -- Brent, you're ready to do this, right?"

Brent shrugs a yes, throwing one last obvious glance at the door.

"If anyone other than me and Brent would like to, you know, _be in a fucking band_ , maybe this would be a great time to shut the fuck up about shit that is _in the past_."

Brendon's not going to say he's sorry again, he's not, fuck that, he's in this band too and maybe it wasn't just about Ryan being convenient, maybe it means more than that to Brendon. But he's still only half the problem. Ryan and his complete inability to actually say what he wants at any moment are at least the other half.

Ryan sighs and stares at his shoes. "Fine," he says finally, almost sounding chastened, and then actually murmurs, "sorry."

And he's obviously saying it to the room at large, to all of them, but Brendon is pretty sick of fighting and feeling bitter all the time. He's totally not cut out for that kind of emo shit. "Yeah, sorry," he echoes, mostly for Spencer's sake because it's not his fault he's stuck with Ryan as a best friend.

On the way out, Spencer grabs Brendon's elbow. "I can drop you at work," he says. "I have to go that way anyhow."

That's almost certainly a lie but Brendon accepts the offer because a ride's a ride and being carless and having about thirty hours of commitments a day hasn't left him the luxury of being picky. Ryan's been mutely driving him around all week because he can't be that choosy about where he sleeps when he's dodging his dad, either.

He's so used to not talking in the car that when Spencer starts casually chatting about a stupid commercial on the radio, about this new sandwich they have at Carl's Jr. that tastes really gross unless you get extra barbecue sauce, about some cousin of his who keeps asking when they're going to be on MTV, it takes Brendon a minute to remember how this goes.

But then a minute later Spencer stops, mid-debate over regular vs. curly fries. "Brendon," he says, and it's his serious band business voice.

The fact that Spencer's driving wouldn't necessarily stop him from punching someone in the mouth. "It's completely in the past," Brendon says. "The -- with Ryan, I'm sorry, really, we don't need more shit to deal with right now, I certainly don't, and neither does the band. I get it."

"Yeah," Spencer drawls out, looking back at the road. "I was gonna say, we need to fix our website, get ourselves cleaned up and do some better photos." He pulls over to the curb in front of Smoothie Hut. "And we don't need more shit right now either."

Brendon hops out of the car. "Yeah, oh, okay," he stutters. "Um, thanks."

*

Ryan doesn't usually bother to call but he still shows up when it's time to sleep. Brendon gets stuck working three hours late one night and when he gets home, Ryan is sitting outside. They go in and Ryan immediately starts bitching about how Brendon doesn't have his own non-pirated internet or cable or, like more than two glasses and eventually Brendon just loses his shit, whipping his apron across the room with an angry snap.

"You could stay someplace else, you know."

"You could give me a goddamned key so I don't have to hang around your sketchy steps all night."

"You could pay rent, you asshole," Brendon says, "and then you could come and go whenever you want. And, hey, maybe you could even buy your own goddamned bed or an extra towel and if you're going to get DSL and, like, a plasma, since you're apparently now independently wealthy, I was thinking, I'd really like a pony."

Ryan slams the door as he leaves, but Brendon's getting used to that too.

He comes home two hours later with a paper bag full of groceries, sugar cereals and cheeze-its and a gallon of milk that hasn't expired or even been opened yet. Brendon's still not giving him a key, on principle -- it's _his_ place, and he's proud of it, shitty though it may be -- but he officially swears to himself he'll try to start texting Ryan to let him know when he'll be late closing up the store so Ryan can met him there instead.

*

Brendon mops the floor as Ryan perches on the counter, sucking down a very berry smoothie, compliments of the chef. It's the Brendon Special. Or maybe it should be called the Ryan Special, since Brendon made it specially because Ryan can be a fucking picky bastard about raspberry seeds and Brendon had to find a way to combine different flavors of sherbet and non-seedy fruit to accomplish exactly what his highness found acceptable.

Ryan wants them to go to this party, some girl from MySpace who apparently knows everyone in Vegas' pathetic attempt at a scene. Brendon has low-calorie dairy base stuck under his fingernails and he's pretty sure there's a test in AP Government tomorrow and, no, he doesn't know why it matters if he passes the AP exam now but he'd prefer to at least show up on test days and the chances of that significantly decrease if he does anything but go home and sleep.

"Take Spencer if you need a date so badly," Brendon says, kicking the janitor bucket back into the utility closet.

"He has actual parents and it's a Tuesday night. I think. Come on, you've got like four years of perfect grades and attendance."

Ryan kind of has a point. Plus it's good, he keeps saying, for them to get themselves out there, get talking about the band to people who will be willing and able when they need street teams and merch girls. Brendon knows it's just Ryan repeating the Gospel According to Pete Wentz but it's still kind of exciting to contemplate a day where people might actually do shit for them just to be closer to their music.

Plus it's good for him and Ryan to keep working on how to hang out without wanting to kill or kiss each other at any random moment. Brendon's getting better at that part, he thinks.

The party's at a big house out on the extra expensive side of Summerlin. People are throwing themselves into the pool in self-defense, pre-emptively diving away from pushy drunk guys who see every chick in a bikini as an easy target. Ryan grabs his arm, long fingers wrapping around Brendon's wrist, and tugs him to the safety of a room with huge ceilings and a beautiful baby grand polished so shiny Brendon can see the circles under his big tired eyes. He watches Ryan smoothing his hair across his forehead in a way he's pretty sure Ryan copied from watching Pete.

Ashton, the chick whose house it is, comes over with a bouncy run that makes her breasts sway and test the limits of her shirt's structural integrity. Not that Brendon's complaining, exactly. She's really glad they're there because she's sick of hanging out with guys who say they're gonna be a band, "but, like, then you realize they know two chords and are just trying to get in your pants, and they don't know how to do that very well either!"

Ryan laughs like that's really funny and Ashton drags them both across the house to meet her actual friends, she says. Brendon drinks something purple a girl with matching bangs hands him with a smile and a hard press of her breasts against him. He's drunk before, a few times, beer and once a glass of red wine but this is sweeter, headier, like Red Bull with the opposite switch turned on.

"Hey," Ryan says, hand on Brendon's chest. "How many of those have you had?"

"Only one, I know, I know, how totally lame am I? This is not rock star behavior." Apparently he's an honest drunk.

"Drunk people do stupid things," Ryan says.

"I know, I know, you're totally right. I have chosen the right. You will lead me, Ryan Ross."

Ryan gives a long exasperated sigh, the vocal equivalent of rolling his eyes.

"It's good for us to hang out like this, right? We're good. We can be good, Ryan."

Ryan pats his arm and Brendon hugs him around the waist and lets himself be walked outside. They wander into a conversation and there's no "previously on life with Ashton" to get Brendon caught up, so he continues to lean into Ryan's warm chest and let Ryan's arm around his shoulders pin him in one place like a butterfly, like a picture in an album.

"No," Ryan's saying, "we're not going to be that kind of band," and Brendon nods into his neck even though he has no idea what they're talking about. Somebody laughs, Ashton or one of her rich friends who are so sure they know everything about what someone would want to spend their time or money on.

"I'm sure Ryan knows exactly what the girls like," Ashton says, and Brendon feels her fingers worm their way into the top of Ryan's jeans, right where Brendon's hip is warm and balanced and maybe she'll get her hand slapped away too, except Ryan is smiling along, like it's a charming joke, like he likes that too.

"Yeah," Ryan says, and his voice is low and serious the way it only gets if he's talking about music, "I know exactly," he says, and then his fingers are under Brendon's chin, tilting Brendon's face up so he can press a kiss to the edge of Brendon's mouth. Brendon blinks wildly because, wait, what the fuck, the two of them on their own wasn't cool but a party full of people they barely know is fair game?

Ryan kisses him again, wetter this time, shifting so they're facing each other, and Brendon has no idea, seriously, but it feels good to do this again, it's so good to have Ryan's hands on his chest, somehow even better to have an audience for it, a whole gang of people to prove he's not crazy for thinking maybe Ryan wants more, people who are probably wishing they were in his place right now, Ryan's mouth on theirs, Ryan's fingers tugging at the neck of their t-shirts.

And then Ryan pulls back with a triumphant grin and Ashton giggles and turns Ryan's mouth to hers. "So hot, you two," she mumbles against Ryan's lips, which Brendon can totally hear because, hello, he's right there, he's still got an arm around Ryan's waist.

But even that falls free when she tugs Ryan away. He's left standing unsupported and Ashton touches Brendon's cheek and says, "I'm gonna borrow your boy for a while, 'kay?" Ryan looks sheepish but also like his mind's made up, like he thinks he's making some kind of point, taking a stand, so Brendon shrugs and swallows a cold thud of pain. He's pretty sure the purple drink's magical effects of breezy blissful happiness have long since evaporated.

"I'm not waiting up," he calls after them, and Ryan glances back over his shoulder as Ashton leads him into her house, nodding.

A strong hand closes around his shoulder, squeezing. "Man, it sucks when they pull that shit just to score a chick," this guy with bright blue eyes and shiny blond hair says. A kid, really, probably Brendon's age, with freakishly clear skin and a faux-hawk and red lips like a cherub. "Oh my god!" he shrieks, and puts his other hand on Brendon's waist. "I totally own these exact same jeans."

"Oh yeah?" Brendon asks, and tries to be cool, to act calm and normal because he's not a complete idiot. He's pretty sure he just made out with Ryan in front of all these strangers and now this ridiculously pretty kid is hoping to be next. He's prettier than Ryan. Different than Ryan, really. Not Ryan. Maybe that's what Brendon needs to try.

"Yeah," the kid says, like _duh_ , like he's not an idiot either. He cocks his head and runs his fingers through the hair at the nape of Brendon's neck. "Do you know how to waltz?"

"Do I -- what?"

"Waltz. You know, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three." Brendon finds himself swaying his head back and forth to the beat and grinning. The kid runs his hand from Brendon's waist up along his arm, folding his fingers into Brendon's. "These parties suck without dancing."

Somebody has to lead, he guesses, and so Brendon says, "Ready?" and counts off two and two-thirds measures and steps into the waltz, humming his favorite Bach to give them something to dance to. The kid laughs, tipping back his head, and follows wherever Brendon steers. People get out of their way or their feet get stepped on, and as they sail breathlessly through one patch of party Brendon hears a round of applause and a long wolf-whistle.

They end up on the edge of the property, where the landscaping bleeds back into unfinished desert, and Brendon spins them around once more and then dips the kid back, singing a flourishy end note as he stands them up again.

"If you don't want me to call you Prince Charming," the kid says, gasping a little, "you better tell me your name right now."

Brendon kisses his open mouth, just a quick press together, like a cartoon. "Works for me, Cinderella."

He slaps Brendon's chest, but lightly, a joke. "It's Cory, please, I have four sisters and they already treat me like the house maid."

"Brendon, then, is probably okay," he gets out, and then Cory is kissing him for real, leaning up to reach Brendon because he's an inch or two shorter and that's, that's new, that's different. Cory has wide shoulders and a stronger build but he has to tilt his chin up to kiss Brendon. He holds Brendon's face between his thumbs to keep him at the right angle.

It's dizzying, the making out and the waltzing and the other making out and the whole damn night, really, all in a row like that. It catches up with him in a rush, like he's drunk again, like this is the kind of fairytale where Cory's touch is laced with a magical potion.

"Is this, uh --" He pulls back and Cory licks his lips, not subtly, not without looking down between their bodies towards Brendon's crotch, which is currently straining the expensive seams of his girl jeans, which are totally not built for boys and their issues. "This is really happening," Brendon says, just to be sure.

"You telling me this kind of thing isn't always happening to you?" Cory palms Brendon's ass and leans up to kiss his neck.

"Spontaneous waltzing? Um, no," Brendon says, and wiggles free, "not that often."

He barely even knows this kid except that he's cute and funny and can waltz backwards, all qualities Brendon's inclined to like in a boy, he guesses, if he'd spent any time at all thinking about what he generically likes in boys. But now that they're standing still he's not sure he wants to go where this is obviously going next.

"Uh, speaking of pumpkins, and curfews, and." Of course he never wears a watch any more, and his cell phone is back at the apartment, and so he feels even lamer than expected when he says, "Those things. I should really --"

Cory's face falls, all genuine disappointment, no aloof put-upon distancing. "Oh," he says. "Really?"

"Really, yeah," Brendon says, and darts a kiss at the corner of Cory's mouth in apology. "Thanks for the dance, though."

He walks back up to the party and finds some girl in the driveway headed back to his part of town. He leaves the door unlocked, because he really doesn't want to have to wake up at three a.m.

He falls asleep alone and dreams he and Ryan are doing the tango around the pit at a Fall Out Boy show. Ryan's not a very good dancer, all stiff and stuttered footwork, stepping on Brendon's toes at every turn.

Ryan doesn't come home at all. Brendon knows there are other places he could be, like Spencer's, but waking up by himself in his mangy apartment it's hard to pretend, it's hard to lie even to himself.

"What was that about?" Brendon says the next day, stopping Ryan at the door before practice. " _That_ ," he says again, when Ryan stares blankly, back in Never Happened Land. He's not going to let Ryan make him feel insane again, he deserves at least that much. "The _kissing_ ," he hisses, because maybe he's been guilty of a little excessive experimentation in the past but it takes two, it wasn't like he'd roofied Ryan or something, and Ryan was the one who escalated things to include an audience.

"People do stupid things when they're wasted," Ryan says finally.

"You had a 7-Up."

"Oh, yeah, that's right," Ryan says, like it just occurred to him.

And, Jesus, was it some kind of punishment? It was one drink, " _one drink_ ," Brendon says, "and I didn't liberate myself to go edge, you know."

"You're liberated now? You're a free man, is that it?"

"No, obviously I'm stuck with you." Brendon can't even get through the sentence without cracking a smile because it's a ridiculously wonderful fate, really, to be unable to escape his own band, his band that's going places, that has a contract and a plan and getting out isn't just a dream any more, it's a contractually obligated deadline. "With all of you," he clarifies, as Brent and Spencer come in, bitching about whose turn it is to pay the space rental.

Ryan looks down at the neck of his guitar and says, more quietly, "I heard you put on quite the performance, too. The waltz, really. Whoever knew that Brendon Urie had so many hidden talents."

 _You did_ , Brendon wants to say, and swallows it down, because whether or not Ryan had any idea how much there was buried deep inside Brendon waiting to be brought into the real world he's the one who put the words in his head, in his mouth, who made it seem possible.

"I found my dance card unexpectedly empty," Brendon says, trying to make it sound light. He wants to be able to let it go, to let it be in the past, to avoid another Spencer Smith lecture on the perils of excessive band companionship.

Ryan twists his E string tight and whispers, "Sorry," like maybe he's talking to the guitar. He's not, though, Brendon knows. They're maybe starting to speak the same strange language.

So he lets it go. "I left the door unlocked, you know. It's a good thing no one came in and, like, raped and murdered me in my sleep."

Ryan looks up and laughs easily, like they're really over it, like they can practice now without fighting about anything but the music. "Yeah," he says, "or stole all of your precious valuables. That really would have sucked."

  
 _ **Pretty much nobody is getting their emotional needs met.**_  
Ryan comes to Brendon's less after that, now that there's another stop in his constant rotation of anywhere-but-home. It's so annoying that Ryan has time for a girlfriend when all Brendon has time for is practice, work and (sometimes) trying to get his ass to school enough to not flunk out before graduation. He sleeps a little better, though, now that he has more nights alone.

Spencer says the last set of photos sucked, so Brendon goes one evening after work to get his hair cut. There's one guy left by the time Brendon arrives, tall and a little beefy and pierced in about a dozen places across his face, dyed black hair swooped up in front like he thinks it's the '50s, like he should be listening to swing music and twirling a girl around his waist.

He smiles when the door clangs open and says, "You look like a Brendon."

It's friendly and familiar and Brendon realizes he's kind of starved for human contact that's not about _the customer is always right_ or _all seniors must schedule a mandatory exit interview_ or _let's try that again from the top_. It's nice to show up someplace and just be expected to be himself. "I am, in fact, The Brendon," he says. "I mean, come on."

"There can be only one," the stylist quite sensibly agrees. "I am The Jay."

Jay leads Brendon to the wash stand and tilts his head back into the bowl so the hard plastic curves are nipping at his neck. When Jay runs his fingers back around Brendon's ears, warm water trickles upside down his scalp. It's so unbelievably relaxing and awesome that Brendon moans, hears himself moan, snaps his eyes open and slaps a hand over his mouth. Jesus, be a little more desperate for attention, why doesn't he --

"It's okay," Jay says, and does the same move again, only slower this time, slow and Brendon thinks the word _sensual_ , though he's not sure he's ever actually thought that word before. Jay is staring down at him the whole time, smiling. "It's okay to like it," Jay says, softer, deliberately flirty, like that kid Cory but also, in the way it's ambiguous and layered and easy to miss, like Ryan.

Brendon wants Jay to lean over so they can kiss upside down. He cranes his neck back, lifts his hips and thrusts his chin forward, brain cycling through a dozen dumb things to say in case somehow he's not being obvious enough.

Jay's fingers go still in Brendon's hair, squeezing softly, and then he bends forward, kissing Brendon wetly, messily, at least one of his lip rings clinking against Brendon's front teeth. Brendon gasps and Jay stands up straight, brushing his thumb backwards up Brendon's cheek, from chin to eyebrow.

Jay's lips quirk. "Let me do your hair first."

When Brendon is seated upright in the chair, legs dangling and a plastic smock draped around his shoulders, Jay says, "So what do you want me to do?" He's using a serious _I'm a professional_ voice but he still blushes at Brendon's smirk in the reflection, chuckling and smacking Brendon's head. "I'm holding the scissors," he points out. "Behave or beware the consequences."

"Okay, so, I'm in a band."

"Huh." Jay seems to be reassessing the situation.

"I'm the singer. It's -- uh, I don't know. We need better photos?"

"What kind of band," Jay says finally, still sounding skeptical, like maybe Brendon's lying or is clearly not cool enough to be in a band or maybe just has a rule about not kissing singers, or -- "because I don't want to give you, like, Ziggy Stardust hair and have it turn out you play Rush cover songs in a bar."

"You're totally trying to ask how gay you can cut my hair," Brendon realizes, and says, and then realizes he said, and holy shit, he didn't think he was quite there yet.

Jay cracks up. "Yeah, well. Basically."

"Last week it took me 10 minutes to drag our guitar player out of the make-up aisle, and the only reason he left empty handed was we're both pretty broke right now. So I think the answer is, you know."

"Pretty gay."

"Yeah," Brendon says, and whispers it back, his heart thudding heavy against his chest, so scared he's surprised to look down and see the black vinyl smock smooth and still. The world's not ending. The world's barely noticing.

"Okay, I know exactly what to do then," Jay says, and starts cutting.

After Jay is done, slicking his fingers down the sides of Brendon's head so his hair lies flat, he unsnaps the smock, folding it into a square. He steps through slices of hair to lock the door and pull the blinds and snap off the overhead lights. The string of bulbs around the mirror is more than enough for Brendon to see as Jay lowers his chair and bends forward to kiss him, right side up this time.

He unbuttons Brendon's jeans without having to look away and slides to his knees with a happy sigh. "Good thing you were my last appointment," he says against Brendon's thigh, in between licks.

"Uh, yeah," Brendon manages because, Jesus, _this_ is what it feels like to have somebody suck your cock? People survive this?

Jay swallows him down and then says, on a breath, "Cause that would've been a little much even for this place, but I don't think I could have --" and then he sinks back down and Brendon watches his own shocked face in the mirror as he comes in Jay's mouth.

Because he feels sort of shitty about not giving Jay more warning, and because Jay asks so nicely, and because Brendon can barely remember his own name let alone any compelling reason he should say no to anything that involves _more sex_ , he lets Jay fuck him up against the office door, Jay's broad body covering his and his gentle fingers pushing in slow and careful, almost like he knows Brendon's never done this before, almost like Brendon could have told him and it would have been okay.

Brendon has never seen anything online that really prepares him for how it hurts, and how then it hurts more, and how then he stops caring because Jay's hand is rubbing up and down his cock. Jay's belt and jeans are knocking against Brendon's bare legs and Brendon's mouth is pressed against a square of door where he can taste his own hair gel from when Jay had first pushed his back against it, asking so sweet and urgent.

Brendon makes a high grunting noise and comes _again_ , Jesus, this night is so fucking awesome, and he braces his shaky elbows a little better as Jay pushes hard against him another dozen times. When Jay comes he slumps over Brendon, one heavy arm looped around Brendon's neck like he needs it to stay standing, like he needs a moment to pull himself together just as much as some kid who's never done this before.

Jay puts both hands on Brendon's hips and pulls out carefully, turning Brendon by the shoulders and kissing him. He tucks one thumb right under Brendon's ribs, hand splayed out across his stomach, and says, "Your band better be good."

Brendon laughs into Jay's cheek. "We're fucking amazing."

"Good, that's good, because you are way just --" Jay scrapes his teeth along Brendon's ear. "You're way too fucking skinny to spend very long doing the starving musician thing."

"Don't worry, I totally have money for my haircut." It sounds too defensive and Brendon kisses Jay to prove it's not like that, he's just not expecting some employee discount or anything. He doesn't want to be a guy who uses sex for anything other than feeling good.

Jay bites Brendon's lip. "Good. Then I'll have cash to buy us some food."

*

Brendon and his new gay haircut do not, collectively, do a great job of reassuring his mother that he's doing all right on his own.

"You can come home any --" she says again, and Brendon just shakes his head sadly because it's hard to keep saying no when his throat feels thicker each time and his mom's questions get softer, more lost.

"You wouldn't have to go to --" but they've been through that, too. Mother Continues To Ignore The Obvious; Son Remains Reluctant To Spell Out Certain Unpleasant Facts.

She takes a slow swallow of her herbal tea and Brendon slurps the bottom of his Frappucino. Starbucks seemed like good neutral ground until they got there and Brendon discovered his mom's definitely not in a sometimes-caffeine-is-just-what-a-person-needs phase, like maybe she's decided there's only so much theological wiggle room the Urie family can sustain at any given time and obviously Brendon is occupying all their resources right now.

"Fine," she sighs, "how -- how are you? Do you have --" She looks down at the table. "Brendon, I don't even know how to ask you how things are."

So he tells her about the band, about Pete and the deal and the songs they're writing, "or trying to, I guess," he says, "because Ryan does all the lyrics and we're doing the music around that." It's kind of strange to explain out loud.

"That sounds...challenging," she says, in her careful mom way. He doesn't even mind, though. He's kind of grateful for someone he can talk to about this who isn't, like, also in his band.

"It's -- Ryan's songs, Ryan's lyrics, I mean, they're pretty intense, you know? Like, he writes these really intense things about his dad, or girls he's --"

He blinks away the relief he's sure he sees at that.

"-- or even, the ones about other things, like books and stuff. I'm the one singing them, it's _my_ job to perform them so that people feel a certain way, and -- it's really, you know. Emotional."

His mom smiles a little, just the corner of her mouth. "You," she says, "can be a little emotional sometimes."

His mom is totally calling him emo, which he is man enough to admit he sort of is, and his laugh gurgles out, just bubbles up from somewhere simple and happy. She puts her hand over his, squeezing his knuckles, and God, he misses this, misses her, this whole thing is so stupid. If she asked again now he'd probably say yes, he'd go home, even though he feels a rolling nausea just considering it, just thinking about how badly these parts of his life fit together, how his father would look at his new haircut, how his mom who can't do the dishes without humming along to something would never sing the words that Ryan has written.

His phone beeps, Ryan texting to say he's waiting outside, _your getaway car is here, time to make a run for it_. Brendon wants to ask his mom to come meet Ryan for real, like he'd introduce her to an actual friend, but her eyes are full and her mouth is tight again, like he's leaving all over again. He hugs her tight and promises to call so she doesn't have to beg him for that little of a gesture.

He's not going to be a guy who's actually mean to his mom, no matter what they don't like about each other's lives.

*

Jay calls Brendon a few days later and Brendon wanders around the perimeter of his tiny apartment making small talk, trying to avoid saying exactly how old he is and overlooking Jay's inexplicable fondness for Brit-pop, the newer incessantly dancey kind, not the Smiths kind. Then it hits him that this is probably the kind of shit you deal with if you have a boyfriend, and he's not sure that's what he wants. He doesn't have time for a boyfriend anyway, and he's not at all talented enough to figure out how they can just have sex again without spending way too much time worrying about whether that means he's obligated to have put up with a crappy old CD collection.

Ryan knocks twice, rattles the handle, and Brendon crosses the room diagonally. "Uh, my, actually my -- my roommate is home," he says brightly, tucking the phone between his chin and shoulder so he can flip the dead bolt and shove his knee into the door, loosening it from its sticky frame.

"Thanks," Ryan says, breathy, and Brendon makes some ridiculous clown face as he gestures at his cell and shrugs. Ryan drops his bag in the middle of the floor and flops down on the futon. Must not be an Ashton or Spencer night.

Brendon turns away, his back to Ryan and his forehead pressed to the door. "So, yeah," he says. "I'll call you later. Maybe, yeah, that could be good."

When he clicks the phone shut, Ryan says, "You were totally lying." Brendon turns around and watches as Ryan props himself up on his elbows. He dryly revises his statement. "Weren't you? I'm not sure I want to be in a band with a guy who can lie like that, just to get a girl off the phone."

Brendon doesn't want to be a guy who lies, not about the important stuff, not to the people who matter, especially not when it's at least partly his fault they don't know the significance of what they're asking. How far he goes is its own sort of test, not just a test but an actual moment when he makes one choice over another.

He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms on his chest, swearing his voice will come out steady. "Does it matter if it's not a girl? I mean, not, like, _does it matter_ , but is it still lying when it's, I don't know, not being translated into chick speak?"

Ryan gives him that slow, mystified stare and says, "I don't know."

Brendon sighs. "Me either."

"The kid from the party?" Ryan asks eventually.

"Uh, no, actually," Brendon says. "The guy who cut my hair."

"Oh," Ryan says, small and quiet.

"At least I know what I want now," Brendon says. "Anything from here on out is taste-tested and audience approved, you know, just icing on the cake." He makes himself shut the fuck up then because yeah, it's true, he's sure now. Maybe he doesn't need a list any more. And maybe one day he might admit Ryan wasn't just in the right place at the right time.

Ryan doesn't say anything for a while, like he expects Brendon to take it all back. He seems nervous too, picking at a loose thread on the knee of his jeans with tiny, careful movements. It's like the air in the room needs to settle, needs to de-charge somehow. Finally he says, "Good."

Brendon sleeps pretty well that night, even with Ryan's shoulder hot against his.

 

 _ **She says, "Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want."**_  
At three a.m. on a Friday, Saturday really, Brendon wakes up to a thudding noise coming from the hall. The sound is weirdly low down, like knee height, and Brendon stands there in front of his door barefoot and listens carefully before his sleepy brain realizes, holy shit, it's someone sitting, he should open the door --

Ryan falls over onto Brendon's feet, his bony shoulder hitting the scarred wood floor hard. Brendon hauls Ryan up by the armpits and pushes him towards the bed, which, because he didn't bother turning on a light before investigating his potential burglar, Ryan trips onto face-first. Brendon kneels on the mattress next to him, turning him over and frowning at his puffy eyes and the reek of cigarette smoke.

"Ryan Ross, have you been crying? And smoking? And crying?"

"No," Ryan says. "Categorically." He cranes his neck away from Brendon and whispers, "I walked in on Ashton and --"

Brendon doesn't begin to list all the emotions he has in that moment. "Oh," he says. "Oh, that..."

"So I drove around for a while," Ryan continues, a little louder, "and then I got sick of driving and I went to this place down on the Trop, this -- have you ever been to a cheap strip club, Brendon? It's, Jesus, why do people like those places, it's so fucking depressing. Don't, you shouldn't go, you'd hate it."

He rolls onto his side, hugging himself, and Brendon lies down behind him, wrapping one arm carefully across Ryan's chest, doing everything he can to make it less like a grope and more like a comforting friend thing. Ryan's shoulders hitch once and then he sighs shakily.

"I'm sorry," Brendon says, and they fall asleep like that, and Ryan doesn't move when Brendon gets up in the morning and gets dressed for work.

He swings by the apartment on his lunch break and Ryan slaps down three pages ripped from his journal. "We needed more songs anyway," he says, and then locks himself in the bathroom.

Brendon winces as he reads the lyrics between customers. If the other songs made him feel like he was strutting around a stage naked, even without a crowd, these are like going to be like getting fucked in front of a live audience and then having his heart ripped out of his chest as the encore.

When he gets off work, Ryan's sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing guitar, and he holds up the shiny brass key like it's an optical illusion, like it's a cartoon, like it might do a song and dance routine.

"You _so_ owe me a pony," Brendon sighs, and goes to take a really cold shower.

*

Three weeks out and Brendon can't even do enough math to calculate what grades he needs on which finals to be sure he graduates, let alone remember calculus. He's sure he bombed the two AP tests he bothered to show up for, multi-purpose fold-out tables lined up neatly down the main room of his old ward, because apparently separation of church and state doesn't apply when college-bound kids need to be protected from the interfering influence of bells between classes. He felt like he was being yelled at by an invisible bishop the whole time he was in there.

Oh, and he's got this little side project, this _band he's in_.

Recording Deadline Looms; Singer Suddenly Paralyzed, Struck Dumb With Fear Of Failure. He refuses to make a pun on their name, even in his own head. It's making them all bitchy, nervous and sensitive and exhausted because somehow they've managed to squeeze in another five or six hours of rehearsal every week, like there could possibly be that many minutes in a day.

Brendon would prove it's physically impossible that he exists for as many hours as he has obligations but, again, that would require math, and that would waste brain cells he could be using to try to remember Ryan's vague hand gestures directing him which lines to sing, "no, that has to be --" like that, a crescendo-y flail that Brendon takes to mean _more_ , whatever that means.

"Could you just fucking, _please_ ," he says, and reels his voice back in, because he isn't actually trying to be an asshole, "could you please just try using some other words to explain what isn't working."

Spencer flips his eyes back and forth between them, a referee waiting to call foul. Brent stares at a spot on the ground between his feet.

"Nice," Ryan says eventually, like he took a leisurely stroll to the nearest library to check a thesaurus. "It's too nice. And you're just -- standing there. People are getting shot and you're just standing there."

"What, you want me to fall on the goddamned floor?"

Brendon can see Spencer's chin come up. Ryan tracks the movement, too, and the two of them communicate with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. "Maybe?" Spencer says.

Spencer doesn't use sarcasm during rehearsal, which was confusing for the first six months given it's his native language everywhere else. It also makes him impossible to argue with, so Brendon says, "Fine, whatever," and they start again.

He closes his eyes, thinking _more_ , thinking _not too nice_ , thinking _just shoot me and get it over with_. He feels his knees dip down before he realizes he's bent himself forwards. He opens his eyes and flings himself up, missing half a line as he sucks in a big breath. Ryan's staring right at him, lip curved as Brendon does it again, this time with his eyes open, his legs curved beneath him, stomach brushing his thighs, as far as he can go without his knees giving out. He unfurls again, jumps once and drives it right into the chorus with a twist to the words, a shout.

As the final cymbal crash dies, Ryan nods, almost to himself, swiping his hair out of his face. "Better," he says. "Now you have to get all the words out too."

*

They ride home in tired, surly silence, and as they pass Jay's salon Brendon says, "I think instead I'm going to go be a hairdresser. I can totally spend my life just singing in the shower, I'll be fine."

"No," Ryan snaps, "that's, that's complete bullshit, don't act like you can just walk away from this." He almost sounds scared that Brendon might mean it, like Brendon's dad sounded right before he left, like they were all on the verge of losing something important.

"I know," Brendon apologizes. "I'm not, really."

Another five miles of dead air and then Ryan angles in perfectly between the big truck that always takes half their parking spot, rolling up Brendon's window without warning.

"Hey, fingers, fucking watch it!" He dings the passenger door against the truck trying to get the fuck out as quickly as possible.

"That's my fucking car, you know."

"Shut up or I'll tell Andre the Giant how to lure you out of your lair, and that the scrape on his bumper from last week is also --"

"Shut _up_ ," Ryan says, just like how Spencer does when he's decided the argument is too stupid to be worth his energy. Brendon won't admit that sometimes he's glad to have somebody put a stop to the stupid endless circles of cheap fights covering the same territory they've battled over all night, all month, maybe his entire fucking life.

His stack of textbooks is waiting on the tiny table Spencer found in his grandma's garage and donated to the cause of multiple pieces of furniture. They even acquired two chairs, but at this moment Brendon hates Spencer and even Brent just on principle because they may not have been in all advanced classes but they'd been smart enough to get the fuck out of school as soon as possible.

"I hate everyone so much right now," he mutters, kicking his shoes against the wall with a satisfying thunk.

"You can't hate me," Ryan says, and it's clear he means not that it's an impossibility or even an improbability but that Brendon's not _allowed_.

"No," Brendon says, and catches Ryan smiling in the dim light. He stalks over to the futon and presses his finger into Ryan's chest, poking him with each triumphant word. "I hate you most of all."

Ryan starts laughing halfway through the sentence, and Brendon just barely manages to hold out with a straight face. He sits on the mattress, shoving Ryan over with his hip and bending down to laugh against Ryan's shoulder.

"I'm so fucking whipped," he says, and Ryan laughs harder until Brendon jabs him with an elbow. "Exhausted, you ass, you know what I mean. I'm living like twelve people's lives right now."

"I know," Ryan says, soft, almost with pride, and Brendon tilts his face, resting his ear on Ryan's bicep. Ryan blinks three times in rapid succession and his mouth falls open, eyes flicking down to Brendon's jaw for half a second before coming back up with laser sharpness, drilling into Brendon's head like he can see right inside it, like he knows exactly how much Brendon wants to kiss him, like, all the time.

Brendon wants to kiss _Ryan_ , not some kid at a party, not some guy he meets by chance. He wants this boy who made him see himself for what he could be, who makes him sing these words he barely knew the meaning of before.

Ryan blinks again, and Brendon presses his lips to Ryan's. Ryan gasps, again, like it's a surprise, but how can it be a surprise by now that Brendon wants to do this and has no idea how to stop himself.

He should try to stop. "We promised Spence," he says.

"Let me," Ryan says. "I'll talk to --"

So he pins Ryan's arms to the bed above his head and clambers on top of him, sick of waiting for an engraved invitation that will inevitably be revoked, be denied, be erased from their recorded history. He thinks about how sweetly Jay convinced him, how kindly he asked, and then he thinks, Ryan Ross is not such a sweet boy. He is not so very kind. Brendon makes himself growl low so he doesn't shout over the pounding in his head when he presses Ryan's wrists into the pillow and licks Ryan's ear and says, "I want to fuck you, I want --"

And Ryan whines, forehead clunking against Brendon's as he turns to kiss him, hard, dirty and desperate. And fuck it, Brendon takes that as a yes. He knows Ryan knows how to push him off. Ryan clearly wants to have sex with Brendon even if he has no idea how to handle it afterwards.

Brendon, it turns out, is the kind of guy who is willing to take what he can get from Ryan Ross.

He strips off Ryan's pants, batting a hand at Ryan's shirt and pouting until Ryan sighs and slides it over his own head. Brendon stands at the end of the futon and gets naked as fast as he possibly can, nearly choking himself on his t-shirt and then balling it up to throw at Ryan when he laughs mockingly at the disaster Brendon's made of himself.

Brendon says, "Do you want to be on your back or on your stomach?" and Ryan stops laughing, flushes deep high on his cheeks, across his chest, up his thighs and along his hard cock.

Brendon kneels at the foot of the bed and puts his hands on Ryan's ankles, pulling his legs farther apart, tugging him down so his hips jut up and his heels come to rest flat on the mattress.

"How's this?" he asks, and Ryan says, "What the fuck are you waiting for, then?"

His snottiness is betrayed by how breathless he sounds, so Brendon decides he doesn't have to be nice, but he _is_ going to be slow, be stubborn and steady and it takes less than a minute for Ryan to start begging, to whine, "Please, fuck, Brendon, just fucking --"

They could be in a band together for years, for decades before he'll get sick of Ryan begging, of wanting him so openly. It's so fucking satisfying, so selfishly hot and vindicating and he lets the threats and pleas fade into white noise as he takes just exactly as long as he wants and then some before he even touches Ryan's cock, before he licks his way down and back.

He stops himself just short of actually sticking his tongue in Ryan's ass no matter how much, suddenly, Ryan is demanding he keeps going in that direction. Instead he reaches up and shoves his fingers in Ryan's mouth, and Ryan begs around them even as he sucks, finally spitting them out and snarling, "Go ahead, that's enough, Jesus, do you even know what you're doing or are you actually trying to kill me?"

"Yes," Brendon says, and slides in one finger as far as he can before Ryan squeezes his eyes tight shut. Then he decides to be nice after all, to be sweet about it, to fuck Ryan how he deserves and not how he clearly expects.

When he's in all the way, his pelvis pressed against the soft fleshy backs of Ryan's thighs, he leans down for a kiss, keeping it as careful and as chaste as he can really be when he's got his dick in somebody's ass, as calm as it's possible to stay when he finally realizes _they're fucking_. Ryan's shoulders start to shake, his lips trembling, and Brendon presses his forehead to Ryan's collarbone and fucks him a little faster.

The harder he slams into Ryan the more difficult it is to think of anything for longer than a second or two. Everything becomes these quick stuttered snapshots, Ryan smiling up through the fringes of his hair, Brendon wishing there was something he could hold onto for better leverage, so he could fuck Ryan more, be rougher somehow, he thinks Ryan would like it though he's not sure _how_ he knows or what that means, what he'd do differently.

All he knows are these rapid flashes of skin and heat, flash, give me more, give me Ryan, give me --

Ryan comes first, a loud off-key yell tearing out of him as he shoots all over Brendon's chest and draws Brendon deeper inside. Brendon doesn't think anything but _yes, God, give me more of this_ until he's done, pushing Ryan one last time down hard into the sheets, squeezing Ryan's wrists tight until he jerks up weakly, like he wants it to keep going, like he wants more too.

"More what," Ryan mumbles, and Brendon concedes groggily that maybe Ryan's not psychic so much as Brendon is loose-lipped.

Brendon pulls out and they both hitch a little breath. "Uh-uh," he manages, the undertow of sleep dragging him down. "Doesn't have to be more."

He wakes up once when Ryan shoves him over, sliding out and off in the general direction of the bathroom. Brendon really doesn't want to fight, keeps his eyes closed to fake sleep if he has to. But Ryan just crawls silently back in next to him, long body pressed to Brendon's side, warm and bony and reassuringly real. Maybe they don't know what they're doing, but every time they seem to get a little closer.

In the morning Brendon opens his eyes first, hard again and not really sure if having Ryan still naked next to him means they can fool around or if he should go jerk off in the shower and accept that the best they can hope for is to avoid another go at World War III. He peeks under the sheet, strangely reassured that Ryan's not too evolved for morning wood, and once he stares at Ryan's smooth stomach a while it's not so much a decision as instinct to give into his itchy fingers, to lick his palm and wrap it around Ryan's dick, stroking him slow and steady as Ryan's eyes flicker open, flash desire, flash fear, flash annoyance and resignation and finally what looks like simple, greedy lust.

Brendon throws a leg over Ryan's and Ryan's long fingers scratch at his shoulderblades until Brendon puts his elbows on either side of Ryan's head, moving nothing but his hips, rubbing their cocks together, thighs scissored like intertwined fingers. Brendon feels a little ridiculous, going back to this, this kind-of-but-not-quite sex, now that they've finally fucked.

Jesus, they _fucked_ , he and Ryan totally had sex, no going back from that one, and his rhythm falters for a moment before Ryan reaches down and grabs his ass, squeezing, driving the pace faster and faster until it's like a drumroll, one rapid shuddering blur of friction and bare skin, bare skin _everywhere_ , Ryan's toes on Brendon's calves like he's trying to climb him, Ryan's neck against the ticklish inside of Brendon's elbow.

He can't even tell who's first. It's a photo finish, a sweaty, sticky end to a sex marathon. They are the champions of the world, oh oh oh.

"Uh, wow," he says, stupid and giddy, humming Queen into the pillow, and Ryan laughs, a vibrato of breath against Brendon's throat. "Don't," Brendon says suddenly, and kisses him, pushing his tongue into Ryan's mouth relentlessly until Ryan gives back as good as he's getting. "Don't make me think I made this all up," Brendon insists, and holds Ryan's chin when he tries to look away. "It doesn't mean -- this is fine, just this, okay? It doesn't have to be more. But don't make me think I imagined it."

Ryan doesn't answer but he doesn't close his eyes or wrestle away or say Brendon _is_ crazy, obviously, what is he even talking about, nothing even happened here.

So Brendon says okay for both of them and pushes himself up and off, lets the dizzying buzz he feels reverberating from his ankles to the base of his neck settle low in his spine before he walks to the shower. When he twists to pull the bathroom door shut behind him, he sees Ryan sitting halfway up, head and neck against the wall, watching him, blinking against the morning light.

Judging by the vaguely anemic water pressure, Brendon's pretty late for school. Maybe it's a senior skip day. Maybe he doesn't give a fuck because at this point they've got plans, they have an apartment in Maryland and studio time and summer school -- God, school at all -- sounds like a joke in the face of real life staring down the horizon at them.

Fuck, he's, like, an _adult_ , or close enough anyway, with a job and a band and a naked guy in his bed and he's spent a whole year worrying about how he was going to ever make it on his own but here he is, he has, and he might have walked away from his family but otherwise things are working out, otherwise he's not a total fucking failure. Otherwise he's done okay for himself.

He hops on his toes a little, splashing runoff against the walls of the tub, and sculpts his gay haircut into a soapy mohawk. It's probably late enough to sing as loud as he wants without worrying about getting his ass kicked by his crabby neighbor who works swing shift. His voice bounces off the slick smooth walls a thousand times, like reflections in a mirrored elevator, carbon copies and doppelgangers, and it's like something from one of Ryan's books, a total freaky mind-fuck of a scene.

"Like that," he hears, almost a voice in his head, but when he opens his eyes through a glaze of shampoo it's, Jesus, Ryan is _right there_ , standing right there on the other side of cheap clear plastic. "The song is supposed to feel like that, that's what I've been --"

Brendon yanks back the curtain. "What the fuck?"

"That's what I've been trying to say." Ryan crosses his arms and takes a half-step back, as if he's expecting Brendon to shake himself out like a dog. Now that the idea's occurred to him, Brendon sort of wants to try, mostly to see what percentage of Ryan's brief moment of clarity can be dampened by old-fashioned immaturity. "Sing it again," Ryan says.

"What? No, fuck, what the -- seriously, I'm sort of busy right now."

Ryan stares pointedly at Brendon's cock which is, okay, he's eighteen, he's naked, he's singing, all of these things are probably equal offenders in contributing to his general delinquency but especially his hard-on, because it turns out that even having sex twice in, like, less than twelve hours is not enough to keep his hormones in check.

"I have to go to school," he pleads, because seriously, he's not doing command performances in the buff, not when Ryan's put on his boxers and his bossy face and is idly scratching at something that suspiciously resembles a hickey on his throat.

"You're not going to go," Ryan says. "It's already nine o'clock, and you're hoping if you skip we'll have sex again."

It's possible that Ryan has no psychic capabilities whatsoever, that he's simply dictating his own version of events in order to will them into being. It's one thing they have in common, actually, their bone-deep belief that they can bend reality with the force of persistence, even if Ryan's methods are quiet and stubborn and Brendon's are loud and messy. Brendon seriously hopes sex is something they can be mutually persistent about. He hopes this new Ryan who doesn't run away or immediately start shouting at him after they have sex is planning to stick around for a while.

"Do it again," Ryan says. Singing on demand is still better than fighting, so Brendon rolls his eyes and lamely trots along the chorus until Ryan waves his hands like a conductor.

One skinny finger skates across Brendon's slick shoulder and it's like he threw an electrical cord in the water. Brendon bats at him, spraying droplets across Ryan's bare chest and, Jesus, that looks way too much like something else for him to concentrate now at all.

"No," Ryan says. "Don't sing, don't just sing, you have to -- you have to _perform_." He emphasizes the last word so neatly, like he's mentally underlined it twice with razor-straight scores, that Brendon actually feels his brain do a double-take.

"Here?"

Ryan nods and comes closer, close enough that his shins bump into the tub.

"This --" _is going to make a great story for Rolling Stone_ , Brendon almost jokes, but then, well, probably not, in the unlikely-slash-inevitable event that they are ever interviewed by Rolling Stone or Spin or even the local paper he's probably going to leave out the way that Ryan settles his hands on Brendon's hips, staring right at him like he's not naked, like they haven't ever fucked or touched or had so much as a complicated conversation.

"Like before," Ryan says. "Like yesterday at practice. But even more."

And Ryan's still staring at him, like he sees Brendon, like he's the only thing that matters in the world. Brendon was less terrified walking out on his family than he is in this moment, Ryan's eyes full of something that looks a fucking lot like hope, Jesus, that's just, that's so much to handle that Brendon wishes he still had a faith to pray to that he doesn't fuck up, doesn't fall short. He's just got Ryan now, Ryan and the band and everything depends on this, on him, on their ability to make people feel like he feels when Ryan looks at him like this, to make people need their songs like he needs Ryan's hot stare and scorching touch.

He closes his eyes and leans back into the spray, letting water slide down his face, catch on his eyelashes and drip from his nose and chin. When all he can hear are Ryan's tidy breaths and the asthmatic whine of the shower he opens his mouth and pushes the lyrics out, inhales and exhales and lets his knees drop down again and again, singing as dramatically as he imagines the inside of Ryan's head must look, sweeping landscapes and dying heroines and cruel families that make you hate yourself unless you kill everything in your way in order to survive, unless you make a whole new life for yourself and never look back.

He sings it like that, he fucking _performs_ it and Ryan's fingers slide up and down his body, pressing so hard into Brendon's skin that Brendon gasps, voice breaking mid-line, throat hungry and raw and burning.

He opens his eyes and Ryan's shoulders are high and proud. "That's -- now it feels like it does in the book," Ryan says. "Like it's real, like it really matters."

Brendon only read Invisible Monsters once. It was the first book Ryan gave him and he'd torn through the pages, scared that if his eyes slowed below a skim he might never get the images the words painted out of his mind, that they'd stain him somehow, show on the outside, scream to the world what kind of boy he was becoming. Wanted to become.

Had become.

"If I sing it like that," he says, _everyone will know_. He doesn't expect Ryan to ever say those kinds of things, not out loud, not without a guitar and Brendon standing bodily between him and the rest of the world.

"And you won't ever have to go back," Ryan answers, like he knows exactly what's inside Brendon's head, like he's just as desperate for what comes next.

Maybe Ryan needs _this_ , needs Brendon to make it so obvious to everyone who they are, what they're like, to help fuck up their old lives so badly that their only choice will be to move forward into the future, reborn and ready for their new lives to start.

"I could," Ryan says, and there are so many ways he might finish that sentence that Brendon isn't sure if he wants to clap a hand over Ryan's mouth or record it for posterity. "I could sing parts of it with you."

Brendon frowns. Harmony's good but it's not quite the --

"Or trade, maybe. I could take some of the lines. So you won't be --"

"All on my own," Brendon finishes.

"Yeah," Ryan says finally, biting his bottom lip and holding onto Brendon's waist as he climbs into the shower, "because you're not."

**Author's Note:**

> Credits: jae_w and I are apparently destined to have the same conversations in every fandom, no matter the boys. Thank god. runpunkrun's got pants, and she knows how to use them. likeadeuce is the best present I ever got for Christmas and schooled me six ways to Sunday. And miella, who never believed I wasn't writing this.


End file.
